It’s looking more likely that the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X handhelds will be priced at $549.99 and $899.99, thanks to former IGN staffer, Destin Legarie. In a YouTube video, Legarie claims to have confirmed the pricing with his local Best Buy, which “spilled the beans” when he called to ask. Just be sure to take this with a grain of salt.
The console will also apparently get demo stations at Best Buy stores, according to Legarie, who provided images, provided by an anonymous source, of one of the stations from a Tennessee store. One image shows an RGB-laden kiosk with the ROG Xbox Ally X sitting in the middle on a clear plastic display stand. Behind it, a screen appears to be in the middle of a looping demo for the handheld and is flanked by promotions of its compatibility with all manner of Windows PC games. Another image shows a closeup of the $899.99 price tag.
This is as close as we’ve gotten to confirmation of the Xbox version of Asus’ Ally handheld PC consoles, which are due for release on October 16th, but until things are official, don’t go taking out that second mortgage or taking a third job to pay for the near-$900 Xbox Ally X just yet. It’s very possible it’s not true, for one thing. But even if it is, tarriffs could change matters more than they already have, including for handheld gaming PCs like the Legion Go 2, which will be as much as $1479. On the plus side, the rumored price for the vanilla Xbox Ally is $100 little cheaper than what retailers like Best Buy are asking for the non-Xbox version; hopefully, for anyone who wants to get in on this more user-friendly PC handheld without destroying the bank, that rumor holds.
And the price for the higher-end Xbox Ally X is likely to disappoint anyone who was already taken aback by the pricing for its Ryzen Z1-powered predecessor. At the same time, despite keeping their launch prices of $799.99 on Asus’ website, retailers have already been selling the first-gen handhelds at higher prices, and if Legarie’s sources are correct, the entry-level Ally will be a better deal than the $649.99 Ally, with the non-Extreme Z1.
Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom’s Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn’t be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.
