Major Nelson AKA Larry Hryb put the spotlight on the ASUS ROG Ally in the latest episode of his Xbox Podcast. As part of this episode, Larry spent a few minutes talking to Shawn Yen, who is ROG’s VP of gaming.
Shawn talked about the different considerations the team had in designing the ASUS ROG Ally. Shawn’s first focus was the performance aspect of portable and handheld gaming. The first thing ASUS had in mind in the design process was making a device that could run games at a native 1080p.
This was the reason they partnered with AMD on production of the device. Astoundingly, it took the two companies five years of collaboration to get to the AMD Z1 and Z1 Extreme CPUs that are running the ASUS ROG Ally.
ASUS’s second consideration was heat. The higher power silicon found in the AMD Z1 chips also bring with them higher heat. This was also part of the five years of work that ASUS did with AMD to develop the device. This work can be seen in the ASUS ROG Ally’s external design. The placement of the grips, and more importantly, the air inlets and outlets, determined how the device would be able to manage heat and heat dissipation.
Shawn also shared feedback they received from gamers themselves, in focus group discussions, in their development of the device. They were told the fans valued that a handheld gaming device has to be lightweight, and so the Ally weighs in at 1.3 lbs. They were also told that these devices have to have a low footprint, such that it would be easy to stash them away in a backpack. Ultimately, gamers stated that they valued ergonomics the most, which is how they arrived at the final design that they have.
In terms of operating system, Shawn calls Windows ‘the most inclusive gaming platform’. He pointed out that ASUS wanted to make a device that could play all the games that you already own digitally, on a single device, which is a clear nudge on the Steam Deck using SteamOS.
Shawn also had a few interesting things to say about the ROG XG Mobile. For those unaware, the XG Mobile is ROG’s proprietary external GPU solution, and it is compatible with the ROG Ally as well as their laptops. Some will argue the XG Mobile isn’t that portable, but it’s better at that job than most full sized GPUs with external enclosures. It’s the size of two stacked optical drives, compared to a PC tower half as tall.
As Shawn explained, XG Mobile is designed with the proprietary port to properly make use of the full bandwidth of these GPUs, making it the ideal portable solution for people who carry smaller devices than laptops, such as the Ally, or ASUS’ Flow Z13 tablets, which we covered here.
Shaw shared even more details in the interview, which you can watch below. The ASUS ROG Ally is confirmed to be arriving this June 13, 2023, priced at $ 699.99.
