Honestly
As compared to consoles? Windows is pretty free.
Other than the Windows tax, ads, bloatware, constant intrusive up-sell attempts…
Again
COMPARED TO CONSOLES? That’s basically paradise.
Modern, unhacked and unmodded Consoles are:
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Completely locked down, not only do they not let you install applications not approved by the manufacturer, in reality you can ONLY buy them from the manufacturer and you pay a hefty tax for that “privilege”.
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Feeding you ads and upsell attempts whenever you turn them on, as the UI has basically been redesigned to try to sell you more shit first and make getting to your actual games take a few extra steps
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Any undesired feature in a console’s OS is something you just have to accept and move on. Powerusers killing Windows bloat with third party tools is a time-honoured tradition that goes back to Windows 3.11
I’m not saying Windows is good.
I’m saying that for someone coming from a PlayStation or a traditional XBoXSeXxxx (I love making jokes out of this name), this whitelabelled ROG Ally machine would feel like finally being able to breathe. Just for the fact that you can use more than one storefront and install applications from wherever you want.
Let me put it this way:
Linux is an anarchist commune. True freedom.
Windows is an American Style Capitalist Republic. Freedom*********** with a thousand asterisks more. BUT for someone coming from the North Korea that is playing on consoles (or using an iOS mobile device or…), it DOES feel like finally breathing free.
Also, compared to something like the Switch? I don’t see MS remotely bricking these devices if you run “homebrew” on them.
That’s a really good comparison
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Honey I am the Linux mafia. I’ve spent the past 15 years pushing Linux on my circle of gay nerd friends
And it even stuck with 3 of them.
I mean, pushing was clearly your mistake. We gays like it to be pounded into us.
“Freedom of Windows” “Power of Xbox” Good stuff. We should make some more. “From a brand you can trust” "Pro gamers choose … " “Powered by Copilot and Game pass”
“Relive past game moments with recall” “Totally not going to be dropped in 3 years”
Well gamepass on a cheap handheld doesn’t sound so bad tbh
and copilot on a cheap handheld that cannot do anything except record you 24/7 and send it off to MS servers?
Less good
From what I saw, it’s more or less just a new app that starts when windows boots up. Plus some improvements like “the controller now works in UAC prompts” - which tells me that they didn’t really learn anything.
it’s more or less just a new app
You know a reason why Linux with Steam runs just way better than win? Because they use game scope, therefore not needing to render and run all of the desktop.
So what does Microsoft do? They release a new app on top of the already bloated desktop.
Gamescope is a compositor. It has many useful gaming features, but it doesn’t have a major performance advantage over desktops like Gnome, KDE, or tilers.
The performance advantage comes from the fact that there isn’t a full-fat desktop running concurrently with the game. You’re booting directly into Steam.
Performance isn’t noticably worse in desktop mode on the Steam Deck compared to gaming mode. Windows is just full of bloat and has a trash power scheduler.
They thinned the os, ive just watched llt video, the appear to have debloated some of it
They thinned the os
X Doubt
Well according to information out there they did get permition to tweak Windows to make it much more sutible for gaming handhelds.
that sucks, make windows lightweight for all of us.
Apparently it will come to all desktops.
x to doubt its actually gonna be lightweight
Yeah apparently the desktop doesn’t even load when this launcher is used. But it’s still an option.
I don’t think not loading the desktop will really help much. Maybe it will free up a few hundred MB of memory.
Funny how this is exactly the opposite of what they’re doing, but sure, keep on raging.
That’s a typo, it’s supposed to be an R in the middle there, not an F
This got me thinking that Valve is the best competitor to Xbox. Instead of getting to release some walled garden, single store handheld they have to open it up to other stores because otherwise people would just buy a SteamDeck.
But everyone who cares about handheld gaming already has a steam deck and this is going to be more expensive so I don’t see the point anyway.
Moar power! More more more more!!!
boots up an indie roguelite
I guess they are trying to get people already paying for game pass to buy it, because you can play everything on it. But then people won’t be able to cancel their subscription or they’ll have a very expensive paperweight without games.
Players on either device will be able to tap into Gaming Copilot …
…yeah
It the Zune for gaming.
I mean, the Zune is fucking amazing.
FM radio when you wanted it, big color screen that you could watch actual videos on at a solid playback that you could do video out to a TV with. WiFi song sharing. Great playback and no fingerprints in my semitransparent case that glows.
Zune was amazing.
explain
You can Google it. The zune was far superior to iPods but software was absolute dog shit
Exactly!
The Zune was at-best an adequate copy of the iPod lacking a click wheel and having an awkward user interface.
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The click wheel was one of the worst physical interfaces ever invented
i had both. the zune was a gigantic plastic piece of shit with a bigass color screen and a bad ui design. the 500gb ipod was better in almost every way
penny arcade? Wow, are they even still around? I havent seen anyone talk about or reference them for…god… 10 years?
It’s still around, but it hasn’t been funny for a long-ass time.
Penny Arcade Expo is one of the biggest gaming conventions in America (and Aus) so I’d say yeah. I think they still make the comic too.
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Oh dear god it is apparently serious.
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2025/06/08/xbox-handheld-rog-ally-x-games-showcase/
Any guesses for MSRP?
$1200 for the X variant?
$600?
Will MSFT bet the farm, take the upfront loss on the unit, and try to convince everyone this is both their next handheld and their next mainline living room console at the same time?
I’m so hoping Microsoft eats some of the cost of this and makes it a reasonable price. Think of the awesomeness of $600-700 handheld console that can be much more easily modded than the switch 2.
I would love for that to be the case as well… but it wouldn’t make any sense for MSFT to do the first part, and I strongly suspect they do not have the finances to do the second part.
They used to lower the price of Xboxes/?Xbeexes? lower than actual profit margins because they could get more in game sales.
I think the finances are no longer there though to do that but I think it would inspire people to get the game pass more if they did.
Nah. The ROG Ally X they already make with windows 11 and 1 TB is $800+tax. The ROG Ally that came before it was $700 and currently sells for like $400 or so.
The 2TB Rog Ally X is about $1k + tax. I honestly doubt they can get people to pay more than that for a handheld, regardless of the Z2 chip. They are having trouble selling the ones they currently make. Add to this that Lenovo just launched the steam os variant of their newest handheld and it’s significantly cheaper.
I appreciate the info and analysis!
The reason I have no idea what the pricing will be… is that well, GPU prices are nonsense that stick nowhere near MSRP, we got tariffs, we got all game prices getting jacked up, we got massive layoffs at MSFT, they are hurting for money…
And unless this handheld significantly outperforms other existing handhelds… I just don’t think many would buy it at basically any price…
But I also think MSFT is delusional about that, and I don’t think they have the depth of coin in their pockets to try to do a loss leader approach, and I think they’re more likely to just price it the same way cars and houses and rent are ludicrously overpriced, a price based more on ‘we need to pay our debts’ than on ‘how do we have a sensible long term strategy in this market’.
To be fair, the Legion S uses the Z2 Go chip, which is basically same benchmarks as a Z1 Extreme. If this uses the Z2, that’s gonna be faster.
That’s not correct. The Legion S is sold with both the Z2 Go chips and Z1 Extreme. The Z2 Go is similar in performance to the Steam Deck and the Z1E is much faster.
Yeah. But the ROG Ally X just got a price increase so it’s $100 more now than what I quoted in the first comment. And that’s for the 1TB version with the 2TB version costing $1000. This handheld will have less RAM and an new chip with unknown benchmarks? That’s gonna be a hard sell in markets constantly under threat from tariffs. Especially with other handhelds now available at cheaper price points. I’m not sure how much more they can sell this thing for and actually get people who already have a handheld to buy it (or entice people who have held off this long to buy it). Most people looking for a handheld are looking at buying a switch or a steam deck. The things they have going for them is mostly that they’re available for purchase in stores and Lenovo’s steam os variant is gonna be out in the wild and available by the time this thing hits shelves.
Who the fuck announces a product on a Sunday? They must not have much hope this will sell…
Today was the xbox showcase
Right? Xbox showcase is always on a Sunday. Even when E3 was a thing.
Man, when people hate on something, they really turn off all logical parts of their brain, or at least the critical thinking part.
Don’t worry it’s going to launch with silksong. Don’t really know what’s the point of releasing a game along a cross-platform console but I guess the publicity is good.
1200? They never expected to make a profit but they’re in too deep to turn back now.
I genuinely have no idea what either a cost-to-produce estimate would be, or what the fuck MSFT thinks their strategy is here.
I am flummoxed.
It basically uses the next version of the same kind of chips that are in the ROG Ally and ROG Ally X… no one has any idea what the actual performance of this thing will be, I’m seeing barely educated guess at … roughly 25% more powerful, basically?
All the other specs seem identical or near identical.
Then you’ve also got the insane tariff situation and MSFT being both based in the US, and I think they still have their largest share of Xbox users in the US, but I’m not sure.
I guess I also wonder if they will pretend this thing is a console when it comes to software mods, and just lock down the bootloader and brick itself if you try to install linux on it.
Because… if you can just flash like Bazzite or SteamOS onto it… you get a roughly 15% game performance boost.
And then at that point MSFT will just have basically developed a product that non morons will use effectively as a competitor’s platform, mainly in the Steam gaming ecosystem… not MSFTs.
I have a lot of questions about all of this.
Compared to Xbox OS, Windows is very free.
Corporate needs you to compare these OSes
yea the full sentence makes more sense. “freedom of windows, power of xbox” implies it’s trying to compare to previous xbox experience, not other OS.
Although still, never had a console, but I thought a gaming PC is usually more powerful than xbox though. Or I could get mad overthinking of what do they meam by power, what do they mean by freedom. This is why I often dont like marketing speak & just disregard it.
I saw that it’s a trimmed down version of windows so I’m interested in giving it a chance. Who knows, maybe we will be able to install said trimmed down version on regular hardware which would be interesting.
You can always use a debloat script to fix a lot of issues. Nothing will help with Windows broken, ancient architecture, but the scripts do help.
ROFL More like chains of Microsoft!
The one thing I took away from it was that the Xbox-button acts as alt tab. I WANT THE SAME FROM MY STEAM DECK IN DESKTOP MODE!
But in Desktop mode the Steam button does absolutely nothing while a game is running.
Why do you use desktop mode for a game?
I like to have other apps like a browser easily accessible with proper window management. And most of my games are non-Steam games which allow me to easily swap between desktop and gamepad bindings easily to alt tab out.
And I’ve found that running KDE Plasma Wayland has no visible performance impact either. No idea why they use X11 in SteamOS.
Steam os is pretty old now, compared to the Wayland readiness timeline, and proton doesn’t fully support Wayland yet
Ah, but the really funny thing is how Gaming Mode works.
They start the gamescope wayland compositor which launches an XWayland session to run the Steam client in. Which will start gamescope to run the game, which will use a second XWayland session to actually run the game in.
It’ll probably take at least two more years until they can get rid of X.
Oh god, why have you cursed me with such knowledge
Remote play for whatever reason works far better in desktop mode
Can’t you map Alt-Tab to one of the back buttons? Or does that not work in desktop mode?
EDIT: Or if that doesn’t work through steam then is there gamepad software in KDE or the Software Centre that lets the desktop map gamepad buttons?
I’ve had mixed results doing this. Not really sure why
That works. I’m just lazy and don’t want to have to do it for every game.
I guess you could remap them in desktop mode? I haven’t tried but it should be possible.
No, you cannot change the mapping of the Steam and … buttons. They are only available to the Steam client. You cannot remap the Steam+other button combinations either.
Funnily enough when no game is running the Steam button focuses the Steam window. But that functionality is gone as soon as a game is running. Really frustrating.
That’s wierd, works well enough for me? It’s called guide button chord layout.
No changes to that are saved.
And it still doesn’t let you rebind the Steam or … buttons themselves.
Shouldn’t it be "Freedom From” ?
We’ve known for a bit they were going to do this.
I’m honestly surprised they didn’t do it sooner. They already had half of the work done for Xbox. Should have been relatively easy to start with just the interface for all PCs and then iterate from there.
