Xbox has addressed the ROG Ally X handheld’s controversial $1,000 price point — and said it had been hardware maker Asus that ultimately decided how much to charge.
While released as Xbox-branded devices, with access to your Xbox library and Game Pass built in, the $600 ROG Ally and $1,000 ROG Ally X are ultimately Asus-made handhelds — and because of this, Asus set the price.
That’s according to Xbox president Sarah Bond, who told Variety that Asus had used its “insight into the market, into the feature set, into what people want, to determine the ultimate prices of the devices.”
Despite the price, response to the Ally X in particular has been positive. IGN dubbed the device as “the new handheld gaming PC to beat” in our Asus ROG Ally X review, though noted that its cost was “the elephant in the room.”
“At $999, not only is it more expensive than the $799 ROG Ally X, but it’s twice the price of the Nintendo Switch 2 or the Steam Deck,” IGN wrote. “Everything is getting more expensive lately, and while the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X is certainly guilty of this — it’s actually pretty reasonably priced compared to other similar devices that’ve launched in the last year,” comparing it favorably to the Lenovo Legion Go 2 and MSI Claw A8.
And then there’s the issue of tarriffs to content with, an element outside of Asus’ (or Microsoft’s) control. The impact of these added costs to U.S. imports lead to a lengthy wait for Microsoft to formally confirm the handhelds’ pricing, months after it revealed a release date.
With the handhelds now available, Bond has suggested that sales of the devices — at launch, at least — had not been impacted by concerns around its cost.
“The reaction was overwhelming demand for the device,” Bond said. “We sold out on the Xbox Store. We sold really quickly at a number of other places around the world. I feel really good about the value that we’re giving gamers for the price, based off the reception to the hardware.”
Will any of this impact Xbox’s own plans to launch a first-party handheld of its own? It’s unclear. While Microsoft’s gaming boss Phil Spencer has previously confirmed his interest in such a device, subsequent reports have suggested the idea has been sidelined. We asked Jason Ronald, Microsoft’s vice president of Xbox gaming devices and ecosystem, about Microsoft’s internal plans to make a first-party Xbox handheld back in August.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
