Rumour: Microsoft & ASUS Wanted To 'Further Subsidise' The Price Of The ROG Xbox Ally

Weird how Apple hasn’t been affected by tariffs (iPhone 17 £799 = $ 799) but Xbox has (Ally £499 = $599). Same is true for the other models but I’m not bothering to list them all. What is Apple’s secret? I guess smartphones are exempt where game devices aren’t?

Let’s be realistic.

If MS had wanted to. They could have subsidised it. They have the money to do it etc

But they chose not to for whatever reason. I suspect because they are only going to sell a couple of million so not worth it.

@SodaPop6548 To be fair, Satya Nadella and Microsoft as a company have donated a lot of money to Trump too.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner couple of million would be a success for a PC handheld, at least going by historical data.
However, I do believe outside of SteamDeck 2, these particular ones have the highest chance to do so.

They didnt subsidise the product because they didn't want to they just want to simple as!
They want more profits simple!
Corporate greed✌️

I realise that I am probably in the minority here but the price is the least important thing to me.

For me it's real simple this device doesn't offer me anything I need for my gaming. They could give it away with a box of cornflakes and I still wouldn't have a use for it over what I already have.

@Cikajovazmaj I agree.

It may not be for me, but I think they will become ‘next best’ seller after Steamdeck.

“I want to …… but I didn’t” , yeah .. those are the best stories.
“I wanted to decline my raise …. But I didn’t”
“ I wanted to donate all my money …. But I didn’t”
“We wanted to sell the ally for less … But we didn’t” There is a huge difference between wanting to and actually doing so. It sounds like a noble thought but in the end it didn’t make any difference because it was just words.

In the end, subsidizing a device means losing money on hardware sales and then recouping it with software sales; it's a long-term investment.

But Microsoft can't do this if 90% of the games sold on the platform are Steam games, because Valve takes the commission on software sales and they don't see a penny.

Microsoft still has too much work to do to position the Windows Store/Xbox ecosystem on PC to sell this type of device. It feels like they're putting the cart before the horse, but I guess the idea is that in the long term, Xbox on PC will be a real alternative to Steam and all games will end up there, although I find it hard to imagine that day coming.

@Sol76 🤣🤣 love this. "we wanted to but yeahhhh...nah"

@Gabrie Yes and I have seen as of now steam games are showing up in the MS interface so i guess they're just embracing it. That said gamepass is still extremely compelling. The majority of games in my library are from gamepass. It's just new buyers of this device are unlikely to be new gamepass subscribers. So perhaps they did the math on that!

@Cakefish Apple avoided paying trumps tariffs by moving production to India, I think it’s a completely different case to this

if you were even remotely connected in this industry

Yeah, maybe dial it back a bit...

Ah the old we wanted to save you money but we decided against it. The only way they would have even considered this though is if it was going to be heavily pushed and advertised as an Xbox console to the mass consumer market. Since it was never going to be that and it was always going to be marketed towards the tech enthusiast as a niche product I can't believe it was ever a serious consideration.

I know its expensive, but looking at the equivalent Handhelds with basically the same Hardware built in, the RoG Xbox Ally X is $100 cheaper than the MSi Claw 8 and $350 cheaper than a Lenovo Go 2 - all have the Z2 Extreme Chip.

It is still the 'cheapest' Z2E based Handheld PC. The MSi is 10% more and Lenovo 35% more. I don't know how Asus can make money from its customers to offset losses - it doesn't sell games or subscriptions to offset subsidising and MS too can't guarantee everyone will buy from them or sub to Game Pass either...

They at least made a more 'budget' friendly option - if you want the Xbox ergonomics and new OS from launch, but the first gen devices are also cheap and should be getting that OS at some point in 2026. The 'Xbox' branded Handhelds are not the only Handheld PC's that will sync with your Game Pass and Xbox profile/games but the $1k RoG Xbox Ally X is the 'cheapest' Z2E based PC handheld if you 'want' that level of performance.

@Cakefish Apple makes huge margins on their phones—that’s their secret. They sell them at inflated prices to begin with. When taxes went up, they just shaved a bit off their already massive margins, that’s all. Everyone knows what really sells iPhones is branding and marketing.

As for the Xbox ROG Ally, when you look closer, they’re actually not that expensive for what’s under the hood. Still, I wouldn’t mind a small price drop, and I’m glad to see Xbox and ASUS are working on it.

@EvenStephen7 I guess I didn’t hear about that one. Go figure.

@Gabrie Given that this is a windows PC and not a locked down closed device. They run full blown Windows. Games sales aren’t the only way to recoup costs on this device. But Microsoft goal isn’t to push Windows Store/Xbox ecosystem on PC. They don’t care that we’re buying games from Steam cause they’re still making money on us nonetheless But they needed to regain market share that they were losing to Steam OS. They don’t really need this particular device to sell. It was nothing more than a test bed for their more streamlined gaming experience on Windows. The work they did with Asus will come other gaming handhelds and maybe desktops/laptop.

Asus: Please subsidize our hardware

Microsoft: We're not even subsidizing our own hardware anymore points at 5 year old console with 2 TB storage for $800

And scene

@PsBoxSwitchOwner IIRC, the entire handheld PC market is 4 million or so, so a couple of million Xbox Allies would be massive

@ButterySmooth30FPS I believed it was around 6million. With the majority being Steamdeck.

I believe the Xbox branding will help push this above things like the legion go/ other Asus products.

Well they will when nobody buys it. At that point I'll swoop in for my steep discount

MS is a multi-trillion $ company, they could easily subsidize pretty much all of their hardware if they wanted and it would barely register for them. They choose not too, which is fine, Surface and Xbox are not huge sellers and they'd rather make a nice profit off of the units they do manage to sell rather than boosting sales by subsidizing.

@SodaPop6548 It’s all good.

@Cakefish The secret is unlike Microsoft, Apple isn't trying to make any excuses and is simply trying to deliver the best hardware they can at the best price they can.

@SodaPop6548 they backed a winner then also apple agreed to open factorys in america to create jobs so that helped

If they wanted to do it cheaper they could, they just don't want to do it cheaper, which is fine. For me I am not sure why companies make these nonsense statements in the first place. Its like when your boss says I really wanted to give you that payrise but....

It's not super complex. Everything comes down to profit. If they thought it'd have been worth it to further subsidize the Xbox Ally then they would have, but with it being the open windows AND the global economy being a mess AND the game industry being even more of one, it probably wouldn't have benefited anyone. Not even traditional walled garden consoles are keeping up with the subsidizing anymore. The fact that the Nintendo Switch 2 costs $450 as a walled garden lower spec hardware with only one storefront (more expensive games) and paid online & cloud saves is INSANE. All console prices right now are crazy. Of course a Windows gaming PC will be expensive. At least it's not the Legion Go 2.

@Cakefish That is 100% correct. Tariffs are different for gaming devices versus laptops, smartphones, and tablets.

@kmtrain83 Nintendo gets away with it because they have a built up audience and upgrades make competition a non-issue. The Switch 2 starts at $150 more than the Switch 1, but if you're a switch owner where else can you go? It's either lose all your games or pony up. Not to mention all the nostalgia and brand awareness.

The ASUS handheld is a much less specialized closed ecosystem device in a wider market with more competition. It does have a more difficult challenge, but it's also doing more than fine. Hardware companies control well for production. The Xbox Ally X is already selling out, so the product IS performing as well as Microsoft and ASUS hoped for. That's not going to be as well an established console, but they've also controlled for everything so it works out. My only point was that one of the things they'd have controlled for is costs, and ASUS and Microsoft would've done the analysis to say that charging less for the device wouldn't help them make enough money to justify the decision. Competition is more present in the PC market, so it's harder, but it also means that more creative solutions to gaming problems have to be solved.

Coulda woulda shoulda.. but they DIDN'T, I like many others will wait for it to go down some. I'm not paying 900 for a gaming system, each his own, that's rent/car bills or some. If it ever comes down to bout 500, I'd buy it instantly. We got consoles that were both 500 but here's a handheld for 900, you could buy a series X & a PS5 basically lol, it doesn't make sense, also you bet not need no dam cloud with it either, better be able to access it regardless of wifi for that price. I'm not a penny pinched by any means especially on things I want but sometimes some prices be ridiculous even for me.

@Ricky-Spanish Exactly.

I fully agree they should've been subsidized similar to how consoles are subsidized. As they sit they're way too expensive to be system sellers and the base Xbox Ally is woefully underpowered for its price considering you could get a OG ROG Ally with a Z1 extreme APU that would mop the floor with the base Xbox Ally for much less than $599.

All this being said, I genuinely hope that for next generation we get a Series S successor that's a hybrid handheld CONSOLE. I can't imagine Microsoft not wanting a Series S successor considering it makes up 49% of all Series X|S sold this far. I also take AMD and their leaked roadmaps to suggest it's more than plausible for there to be a hybrid handheld Xbox that utilizes a customized lower TDP version of the AMD Magnus APU (which is the rumored BEAST of an APU expected to power the Series X successor). Imagine an entry level next gen Series S successor that can be played on the go but also docked with boosted performance for it to fit the role of "entry level next gen" as the Series S did.

All I know is if Microsoft makes a handheld CONSOLE (not PC) that can play all my Xbox games, I will be there day one cash in hand lol. Happy gaming ✌️