Xbox Ally Mobile Edition: Interview with President Sarah Bond
The new portable Xbox has been out for 24 hours and the response to the more expensive ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally
But as with every major release within the gaming community, Ally’s launch has raised questions about cost versus value, exactly who the portable console is intended for, and how the new on-the-go PC-style product (made in partnership with Taiwanese electronics company Asus) might impact Microsoft Gaming’s plans for more extensive Xbox gaming consoles.
First, Xbox head Sarah Bond told Variety that the price tags for the Ally ($599.99) and Ally
“We looked at how do we create multiple options for people? It was really Asus, because these are their devices,” Bond said Thursday during the launch of Ally devices. “That’s all their vision of the market, the feature set, what people want, to determine the final pricing of the devices.”
Despite the hefty price tag, Bond says that when pre-orders opened in September, “the reaction was overwhelming demand for the device.” “We sold out on the Xbox Store. We sold out very quickly in a number of other places around the world,” Bond said. “I feel really good about the value we provide players for the price, based on how well the devices are received.”
Courtesy of Microsoft
Bond says the pre-launch results are “a real confirmation of something we’ve known and been working toward for a really long time, which is that gaming should work like all entertainment: it should be something you can take with you anywhere. You should be able to play any game you want with anyone you want on any device.”
Xbox decided to partner with Asus to develop the Ally line of handheld devices “to really start transforming the experience and taking it to the next level in a way that we can partner much faster, and in a much more innovative way, than we can.” [individually] “With what each of us was doing,” Bond says.
The first step in the process was prioritizing the ergonomic design of Ally and Ally
Once the work experience was sorted, Bond says the Xbox team’s next call was to Microsoft’s PC division.
“We’ve partnered with the Windows team to think about the on-device Windows experience and make sure it’s optimized,” Bond said. “There’s no keyboard in this. We had to optimize it for console and touch all the way through UE, and all the way through going into your games. So Windows is actually designed to work on a handheld device and on that form factor and on something that’s specifically designed for gaming.”
Some of the early discourse around Xbox handhelds questions exactly who the products are dedicated to, since Asus is focused first and foremost on laptops, and there are skeptics who think the ROG Xbox Ally will be nothing more than an existing Asus product with an Xbox button and branding.
Although it’s not an in-house made product, Bond insists it’s fully Xbox – whether you’re a casual gamer wanting an ally, or a hardcore gamer looking forward to Ally X.
“We want to make sure people have a choice,” Bond says. “We want to make sure there’s an option for high-end gamers who want the latest innovations, who want to push the boundaries of what’s possible, and the most demanding gamers. And then, if someone is looking for PC gaming on the go, they’re a casual gamer, they’re passionate about gaming, then there’s Xbox Allys for them. Which provides multiple options for people, so we can really meet people where they are.”
The announcement of the ROG Xbox Allys and Xbox’s partnership with Asus also sparked some confusion about whether Xbox is out of the in-house made console game. Bond confirms that the Xbox team is still hard at work on next-gen consoles, the follow-ups to the Xbox Series S and
“We are 100% looking forward to making things in the future,” Bond said. “We have our next-gen hardware in development. We’ve been looking at prototyping and design. We have an announced partnership with AMD on that, and that’s coming. What we saw here was an opportunity to innovate in a new way and to offer another option for gamers, in addition to our next-gen hardware. We always listen to what gamers and creators want. When there’s a demand for innovation, we’ll build it.”
The launch of Xbox Ally and Ally 2″. Bond notes that this frenzy of releases and business updates is “the beginning of a new pace that the team is implementing.”
“There are a lot of innovations coming, including things like improving the experience here, expanding the mobile compatibility program, offering more benefits and improvements to the experience and other features and additions that we’ll be offering people, more options, more games,” Bond says.