The screen will offer “full HD gaming,” and it promises a quiet dual-fan design with the seemingly standard setup of dual analog sticks, a left-mounted D-pad, and four face buttons, plus some smaller buttons around the screen to access menus and settings. Beyond the Steam Deck dock, it even advertises the opportunity to “experience Ally’s full potential” by plugging into the ROG XG Mobile eGPU that the company offers for use on its gaming laptops while streaming your games on TV.
The trailer features real games like High on Life, Move, and WRC Generations — unusual for a prank — and has a link to Best Buywhere players can sign up for information about pre-orders.
Although Valve’s Steam Deck has been the most successful attempt to make PC gaming a truly portable experience, there are many competitors, such as the Ayaneo 2 or other Switch-like machines from GPD and OneXPlayer. However, in our experience, they relied on the AMD 6800U chipset rather than a custom design and generally lacked the right combination of horsepower and efficiency that we like to see from handheld gaming machines.
More than anything else, the machine featured in the video looks fully designed and ready to launch as a high-powered entry into the portable gaming market. It’s certainly more realistic than what Asus ROG (Republic of Gamers) posted on April Fools’ Day 2022, which handled the concept of a “Smart Lens” for eye-controlled gestures that it later revealed to be a joke Of course, Asus is also the company that just released its ROG Flow Z13 Acronym portable that defies all belief and understanding.
We’ll have to wait and see if this Ally handheld is still standing after the clock runs out to April 2, but Asus is definitely ready to face the Steam Deck in this category sooner or later.