is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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I was too optimistic. Instead, Microsoft’s flagship handheld “Xbox” is a $1,000 portable — or $599 if you opt for a far weaker model.
On Thursday, Microsoft and Asus opened preorders for the ROG Xbox Ally X and ROG Xbox Ally at $999 and $599, respectively, or €599 and €899 in Europe, £499 and £799 in the UK, and $799 AUD and $1599 AUD in Australia.
One way to think about this is that they’re priced like PCs instead of consoles, which makes sense because they literally are Windows PCs! Here, “Xbox” is only a layer of games, services, and a new full screen experience on top of a Windows machine.
But though “priced like a PC, not an Xbox” might make sense today, it may not make sense tomorrow. This could be the new normal for Xbox, and possibly for consoles period.
Everything we know about video game consoles is being flipped on its head. It used to be each console got cheaper and cheaper — but not anymore. As my colleague Andrew Webster put it last week:
Established wisdom used to be that buying a game console at launch was a bad idea. It was the worst-possible version of the experience: launch consoles cost more and had fewer games, and often these consoles got not only cheaper but better over time, through revisions that made them smaller or added features. For the current generation, though, those who bought at launch look like geniuses — video game consoles just keep getting more expensive.
Microsoft and Sony also often used to subsidize their game consoles, selling them at a loss and making their money back on games and services; Microsoft’s Lori Wright admitted in 2021 that’s how the Xbox worked. But it isn’t necessarily working that way anymore. This year, an Xbox Series X costs $150 more than it did last year — likely because of tariffs — Microsoft has sold fewer Xboxes in recent generations despite the subsidies, and the Xbox Game Pass subscription apparently isn’t doing the numbers that Microsoft hoped for.
So Xbox is no longer about the box; to maximize game sales, Microsoft’s biggest franchises are no longer exclusive to the Xbox or even the PC. They now appear on rival PlayStation, as well, where they sometimes even top the charts! They appear in the cloud, where Microsoft is trying to bring them to your phone, too, if or when Apple and Google make it easier.
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