It was always obvious that the partnership between Asus and Microsoft’s Xbox would birth impressive, yet expensive, handheld gaming PCs, but even our cynicism didn’t prepare us for this. Pricing has leaked online – if you’d call an accidental listing by Asus a leak – for both the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X.
That Switch 2 is not looking so bad now, is it?
If it’s the more basic sibling you’re after, which packs an AMD Ryzen Z2 A chip and 16GB of LPDDR5X-6400 RAM, you can expect to pay €600, translating roughly to R12,460. But for the fancier Ally X, with 24GB of physical memory and the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme, you’ll want to set aside a mouth-watering €900 (∼R18,700). That’s before South Africa tacks on various shipping and import fees, of course.
By the time Xbox and Asus’ efforts (although let’s be real, this is all Asus) hit South Africa’s eager customer base, they may not be so eager. We’re expecting the cheaper of the two to still demand a pretty penny, in the ballpark of around R15,000 — while the Z2 Extreme will fetch upwards of R20,000.
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That’s not a far cry from Asus’ first ROG Ally X, which turned up locally for R18,000. Microsoft probably reckons it’s charging a fair price for the devices, seeing as it pairs perfectly with its ‘everything is an Xbox’ mantra. It’s also recently chosen to prioritise the Windows experience for such handhelds in a bid to beat SteamOS at its own game, before Microsoft can get back to work on its own rumoured bit of kit.
There’s no word as to when we’ll see these consoles enter the market, though we’ve got our fingers crossed that it’ll be sooner rather than later. Sure, we’re keen to see if Xbox and Asus can stand up to the hype, but we’re more interested in Xbox’s promises that Hollow Knight: Silksong will be playable at launch later this year. Leaker eXtas1s, who correctly predicted the European pricing, puts the release date at some point in October.
