I feel like I never see anyone talk about how there’s a lot of games on Series X/S, Xbox One and 360 that you can’t play on the ROG unless you stream it.
I’m talking about games in the Xbox ecosystem not just “oh just play it on Steam” so a dedicated Xbox handheld would be awesome for that.
Unless Play Anywhere is available for every game going forward there would be people who would love this
Me: I want an Xbox handheld.
Some on this board: We have a Xbox handheld at home.
The handheld is Rog Ally.
I love the Rog Ally but in absolutely no way is any of the Windows gaming devices even in same tier as a dedicated console hw.
My experience with Rog Ally.
Spent at least 8 hours on the first day setting up all the software.
Spend at least an hour a week updating shit.
Whenever I use my headset, there is a feedback loop with the built-in speakers. I had to disable the built-in speakers at the driver level.
Get 30 min of battery life playing COD.
Can’t type in games when needed (i.e naming loadouts), because the Asus keyboard doesn’t work in game.
Spent hours changing settings per game to get the best visual / performance.
Wait for an hour for shader compilation everytime there is a new graphics driver update.
Can’t aim for shit in shooters because the Rog Ally joysticks are cheap AF and they’re hurt to use due to bad ergonomics.
I’m not even mentioning the bugs and other QOL shortcomings, some of which have been addressed by Asus since launch, that would never ship day 1 on a Xbox handheld.
I do think a proper Xbox handheld would be cool, especially one that doesn’t have to deal with all the hassle the PC ones do
But It definitely comes with issues, an official Xbox handheld means official support meaning all first party would need to support it at the absolute minimum
So that would mean either having an S powered handheld so devs aren’t needing to develop for another lower powered SKU
and if they do with an S powered handheld then what is the cost? how do they solve the battery drain? when would it even be feasible to release? 2026? If they can make everything feasible for then I could see it working but I doubt devs want to deal with an S power level device launching in 2028
How would an xbox handheld solve this though?
Do PC handhelds/Ally cheap out on the battery or is the tech just not there yet?
PC handhelds cheap out on the SOC by using offshelf APU with not the best firmware. Running Windows also means OS overhead that drains battery. The batteries in PC handhelds are in the range of what a Xbox portable would have. The biggest difference is that MS can use customized arm cores that can emulate Zen 2 performance via Rosetta 2 like HW extensions to significantly increase battery life.
About your S powered handheld, I think getting Xbox One BC is good enough for iteration one if the tech for S is not there. No mandatory full native support for new titles is needed.
I think designing and releasing hardware to support only games from an end of life platform is probably the worst decision they could make.
The same way that Windows 10 Mobile is better for smartphones than the full Windows 10 experience. They remove unnecessary processes and bloat that are not needed in a games console. If the Xbox OS is rewritten for ARM, it will use less energy per CPU cycle. Only problem is Microsoft’s offering of ARM CPUs would provide unacceptable performance to run an Xbox Series game. Right now I would say that we are at early Xbox One game’s level of performance. The Unity game engine was ok at first on my Surface Pro X, but eventually becomes irritating having it recompile scripts every time you just move the cursor. It did the same on the x64 version of Windows, but was less slow.
Can’t be the worst decision since at worst it’ll be neutral (zero added value), unlike always online.
It isn’t zero because they need to design, manufacture, release, and market it. All for a device with basically no market.
As one of those idiots that is addicted to gadgets, I own most of those handheld. I can safely say none of these third party handheld are “better”. The steam one is decent but all the others have great tech but I would never suggest any non tech person buy any of them. They are just not a casual device like a console. MS is the only one in position to provide a flawless platform experience.
Money is not a constraint really for Xbox anymore. R&D should be no more than a 1 billion.
Considering >5 million LTD with >600 million annual revenue, should be able to pay off the R&D cost within a few years assuming the device is not massively subsidized.
The issue is opportunity cost. If the handheld is not well received enough to warrant the followup device (with Series S BC), then the opportunity cost of using this resource is wasted.
Obviously you want a device with Series S BC, that’s the holy grail. But I find value to launching something earlier.
When did money stop being a constraint? We already know they have been metering out consoles because they don’t want to take massive loses. They’ve been raising prices in certain markets unwilling to take addition loses.
Agreed. I meant not constraint in comparison to pre-2017 and not constraint in comparison to Asus, Valve, MSI, etc.
MS should they make a device will easily spend 10x the R&D as those companies.
Actually based on Geekbench 5 benchmarks the M2 CPU should perform a bit better than Zen 2 in workloads. With a HW assisted emulation ala Rosetta 2, I think MS should be able to emulate Series Zen 2 perf in BC as of today. Obviously it’ll only get better.
Isn’t it likely that the CPU would see some throttling in a mobile scenario for thermal/battery reasons that wouldnt be showing in a benchmark like this?
Also, how about the GPU? Every other mobile GPU isnt reaching anywhere near its spec’d performance due to thermal/battery.
Here come a couple of stupid questions!
Why do we think that Microsoft won’t be able to get an arm device that’s better specced than the Series S to emulate Series S?
Is the emulation of Xbox 360 games on Xbox One just not as complex?
Or is arm as it currently is just not up to the task? And just how big of a difference in performance do you all estimate would be needed to do so?
Also, do we think the current emulation scene on Xbox consoles(old Playstation, Sega and Nintendo games) would be possible on an arm device using the same methods as now?
M2 has a TDP of 20W with better than Zen2 CPU perf and 13.5 fp32 teraflops of performance. Not sure if the CPU or GPU throttles, but there is clearly lots of overhead on the GPU. I think getting stable 4TF with 3nm isn’t far away.
A lot of this is not true.
You can access gamepass games.
I’m not sure what the price performance argument is based on but Xbox can’t change the laws of physics.
Steam deck will play for more than 2 hours on AAA games and has a great UX/UI that is comparable to consoles. And also many games launch and play without anyone needing to change anything.
On ergonomics - again the question is how an Xbox device would solve that? The various devices out there are all pretty good for a handheld device. I don’t think you will massively improve on ergonomics.
PC gamepass is not 1:1 with console game pass.
Steamdeck is not a windows gaming handheld. It has compability issues with AAA mp games. I can’t play Fortnite, COD, Halo on it without installing Windows. Its the closest thing to a portable console though outside of the Switch. Steam deck is an excellent reason why a platform holder such as MS should be making a handheld. Steam deck only has the steam store.
Xbox can create custom hardware, remove OS and firmware bloat, along with selling the handheld at a loss to get price/perf advantage. No OEM can do that.
What drive this curiosity in here? Never saw 50+ messages in here!
people arguing that Windows PC handhelds are substitutes for a dedicated Xbox handheld.