The Future of Xbox is … The PC? (Premium)

The ROG Xbox Ally Handhelds that Microsoft revealed today are more PC than console. They’re also yet another gut-check moment for Xbox fans. How much more are we expected to endure?

I guess it depends on what being an Xbox fan means to you. To some, Microsoft has betrayed their loyalty by ignoring the Xbox console to focus on PCs, mobile, and even competing consoles and promoting this shift through its This is an Xbox ads. To others, Microsoft faced down an extinction moment for Xbox by expanding its platform capabilities, embracing subscription services, and shifting the focus to gamers, not particular devices. Oh, and it spent $68 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard, making it one of the biggest videogame publishers on earth, and across platforms.

I won’t play the centrist card here. I am firmly in the latter camp, and I’m tired of the whining. By any objective measure, Microsoft should have simply given up on Xbox, either by spinning it off or just sunsetting the consoles so it can focus on the PC and mobile. But it didn’t do that. And while no one–not me, not you, not anyone–is happy about how things have gone since Microsoft closed the Activision Blizzard acquisition, I see all kinds of things to love about Xbox as a platform. And even some signs of hope.

Those two points are intertwined, of course. And they are both present in these new handhelds, though they are indeed confusing. Xbox was once defined solely by the consoles, of course. But PC gaming entered the fray with Windows Vista in 2006, and though it was ignored for too many years, Microsoft has since given it a first-class Xbox experience. And now we have Activision Blizzard and the other studios, with their footholds in competing consoles and mobile. But the handhelds are the start … of something. Something familiar in some ways. But also something different. Something else.

Let’s start with the branding. The ROG Xbox Ally Handhelds are obviously notable because of the Xbox brand in the name. This is a first: An Xbox-branded hardware device that is not made by Microsoft. And it won’t be the last, as Microsoft has confirmed that there will be more Xbox-branded handhelds coming in 2026 from other hardware makers.

But that’s not the only thing notable about the name. The Ally naming is, I think, a good choice, as in these third-party devices, starting with the two ASUS products, are allies of Microsoft and Xbox in the ecosystem. In describing how one can play Xbox Play Anywhere titles across all three device types now, it’s described as working “across Xbox console, PC and Xbox Ally,” which reads nicely. (I realize Ally is an ASUS brand. But it’s a good name for the first third-party Xbox gaming devices.)

Even more important, these devices are also very specifically called handhelds and not handheld PCs. That’s purposeful. It’s also significant: While the viability of this market is still an open question, Microsoft obviously wants to promote this platform as a hybrid, a device that offers the compatibility of a Windows-based PC but also the simplicity and immediacy of an Xbox console. That you can hold in your hands, like a Nintendo Switch.

I’m reminded of Steve Jobs’ ridiculous justification for the original iPad, the question of whether there was room for another device between the phone and the PC. But in this case, that question has been answered: When it comes to gaming, there is room for all kinds of devices between a phone and a PC. There are incredibly successful handheld gaming devices, today, like the Switch. And then there are less successful, but still interesting handheld game devices, like the Steam Deck.

So the question shifts a bit. And here, too, I’m reminded of the iPad. When you think about whether some future device might supplant the PC generally, the debate is about taking something simpler and improving it, as with the iPad, or taking something complex and stripping it down to the bare essentials (as with the iPhone, which was based on Mac OS X). Here, Microsoft already knew that Windows 11 is too big and heavy for a handheld gaming PC, but the by recent head-to-head comparisons on the same hardware with Steam OS drove that point home for those of us on the outside. And while the Windows-like Xbox OS architecture used on the consoles is technically impressive, it’s even less efficient than Windows. This is why Microsoft was–and still may be–moving to Arm for future consoles.

These new gaming handhelds offer an interesting middle ground. Which Microsoft oddly underplays in its announcement post, noting only that Windows 11 has been “optimized,” with the Lock screen and Taskbar “adjusted,” and minimal background processes. But there’s much more going on than that. In interviews, Microsoft revealed much more about how different Windows is on these devices.

“We were able to take people who have been working on the Xbox OS for 20 years or more and have them work directly on the Windows codebase and start reimagining what that operating system looks like for this form factor,” Xbox vice president Jason Beaumont said. “When the player boots into the new Xbox full-screen experience, there is a whole bunch of Windows stuff that doesn’t get loaded. We’re not loading the desktop wallpaper, the Taskbar, or a bunch of processes that are really designed around productivity scenarios for Windows.”

“We’ve reduced many notifications and pop-ups, and we will continue to listen to feedback from players to make continued improvements,” Xbox corporate vice president Roanne Sones added. “We’ve made tremendous progress on this over the last couple of years, and this is really the device that galvanized those teams and got everybody marching and working towards a moment that we’re just really excited to put into the hands of players.”

“This isn’t surface-level changes, we’ve made significant improvements,” Xbox principal software engineering lead Brianna Potvin continued. “Some of our early testing with the components we’ve turned off in Windows, we get about 2 GB of memory going back to the games while running in the full-screen experience. If you’re booting your device into the full-screen experience and you’re putting it down and it’s going to sleep, it draws one third of the idle power draw than if it was booting the same device into the [Windows 11] desktop experience.”

The new Xbox full-screen experience is, of course, an evolution of the Xbox app you know and may or may not love in Windows 11. Microsoft confirmed rumors–based on leaks–that this user experience will offer “an aggregated gaming library” view, meaning that it will integrate with your PC games libraries outside of Xbox. The company specifically mentioned Battle.net, which is owned by Blizzard and thus owned by Microsoft/Xbox. But the leaks suggested we’d see Steam and Epic Games in there as well. This single view of all your content has been the dream since, well, forever. It was the idea behind Windows Phone and it’s what Apple is trying to do with the Apple TV app on its Apple TV hardware.

This first reveal is just that, the beginning. There are hints about more information coming, for example, for a “brand-new program,” currently unnamed, for helping gamers find games that are optimized for handhelds. And then there are the most crucial bits, like the exact release date and how much the two models will cost, respectively. There is no reason to believe that this will be more or less successful than anything else Xbox has thrown at the wall over the past two years. But I do wonder. I wonder if this is the start of this transition I’ve expected for several months now, to the premier Xbox gaming experience being Windows-based. And that if there are standalone first-party consoles down the road, that maybe they, too, will essentially be PCs, playing PC games.

It’s too early to worry about that, I suppose. But that’s what it’s like to really be a fan of a platform like Xbox. You hope for the best, but the weight of history and experience is ever-present to remind you that nothing is certain. We’ve been drowning in negativity for what feels like forever now, so I am trying to balance whatever hopes I have with what I see as the realities of the challenges that Xbox faces.

And I see a spark here. It’s not much. But it’s better than nothing.