ROG Ally launch date confirmed alongside specs and UK pricing

subcon959 · May 12, 2023

It seems to me they've done a good job here, and the price isn't crazy either. It's mostly a solid upgrade over the Steam Deck for a lot of games.

Unfortunately, they went the no track pad route which is too big a loss for me.

yoyoyo69 · May 12, 2023

Whilst it's nice to see things appear to be moving in the right direction, I can't get on board with proprietary trash.

Xzi · May 12, 2023

subcon959 said:
It seems to me they've done a good job here, and the price isn't crazy either. It's mostly a solid upgrade over the Steam Deck for a lot of games.

Yes and no. According to Linus' review, Deck outperforms Ally at 10 watts, Ally outperforms Deck by 15% to 20% at 15 watts. Naturally it outperforms Deck by a lot at higher power draws, but at that point you might as well be using it as a desktop. Ally's colors are better, Deck's screen however can get both brighter and dimmer. Overall he recommends Ally but mentions that the face buttons start sticking pretty quickly out of the box, and ASUS has said nothing about parts/repairs. Not sure how those things aren't dealbreakers frankly, they would be for me.

subcon959 said:
Unfortunately, they went the no track pad route which is too big a loss for me.

Yeah joystick to mouse is pretty rough, and the ASUS software doesn't seem to do anything to make navigating Windows on a touch screen less of a PITA. Pulling up and using the keyboard seems particularly aggravating. The screen is nice and all, but there are a whole lot of other drawbacks. Best to wait for a true gen 2 IMHO.

Oh, and "play ALL your games" is kind of a disingenuous tagline when some games are nigh impossible to play without a mouse equivalent.

Dungeonseeker · May 12, 2023

Foxi4 said:
I think I would rather have coffin nails hammered under my fingernails than have to deal with Linux on a portable device ever again. I’ve had many portable devices over the years, running anything from Symbian all the way to Android and iOS and the best experience I’ve ever had, and likely will ever have, was on Windows CE, or more specifically, WinMo 5. Nothing else comes even close and it will be sorely missed by people who actually like to “do things” on their mobile device. Still exists in dedicated mobile doo-dads, mostly in the retail sector, but there are no consumer devices to speak of. WinNT with the tablet wrapper will do nicely instead.

I'm guessing you've never actually used a steam deck then? Valve put literal years into making Linux exactly they wanted it to be and the experience is flawless. You got Steam Big Picture running as the main compositor, a UI perfectly tailored to the device, the ability to add external apps and launch them from Steam and an immutable filesystem so users cannot actually destroy anything on the device without really trying.

They were able to build their own UI entirely from scratch to exactly fit their device and unlike on Windows, BPM is not simply a full screen application, it is a full desktop composition engine that runs natively meaning Valve can hit performance markers that would be impossible on Windows since that will ALWAYS have Windows running in the background. On a Steam Deck SteamOS is the operating system, mostly built on top of KDE however when its running is BPM it has full control over the device, it handles memory, CPU & GPU operations, swapping, boosting, throttling & thermal control.

Also when I say handheld I don't mean phone/tablet, I mean Switch-like devices, Steam Deck, AyaNeo and the other one whose name escapes me. Both AyaNeo and the other popular one are both working on their own versions of SteamOS simply because Windows is to restrictive as a platform. Lets say in 2 years MS decide to pull the plug on something that these devices rely on, what exactly can they do about it? This problem is one of the core tenants of FOSS, you're never reliant on upstream for your project, if upstream makes a change you don't like you simply fork and carry on building from the old code base or go full nuclear and do what System76 and Valve both did, create your own environment that you are in control of.

Foxi4 · May 12, 2023

Dungeonseeker said:
I'm guessing you've never actually used a steam deck then? Valve put literal years into making Linux exactly they wanted it to be and the experience is flawless. You got Steam Big Picture running as the main compositor, a UI perfectly tailored to the device, the ability to add external apps and launch them from Steam and an immutable filesystem so users cannot actually destroy anything on the device without really trying.

They were able to build their own UI entirely from scratch to exactly fit their device and unlike on Windows, BPM is not simply a full screen application, it is a full desktop composition engine that runs natively meaning Valve can hit performance markers that would be impossible on Windows since that will ALWAYS have Windows running in the background. On a Steam Deck SteamOS is the operating system, mostly built on top of KDE however when its running is BPM it has full control over the device, it handles memory, CPU & GPU operations, swapping, boosting, throttling & thermal control.

Also when I say handheld I don't mean phone/tablet, I mean Switch-like devices, Steam Deck, AyaNeo and the other one whose name escapes me. Both AyaNeo and the other popular one are both working on their own versions of SteamOS simply because Windows is to restrictive as a platform. Lets say in 2 years MS decide to pull the plug on something that these devices rely on, what exactly can they do about it? This problem is one of the core tenants of FOSS, you're never reliant on upstream for your project, if upstream makes a change you don't like you simply fork and carry on building from the old code base or go full nuclear and do what System76 and Valve both did, create your own environment that you are in control of.

Oh, I’m quite aware - I still prefer a Windows environment. Sorry, I just do. The Steam Deck looks like a mighty fine and a well-engineered product, but given the choice between Linux and Windows, all else being equal (driver support and whatnot), I will pick Windows 10 out 10 times. In fact, if I could simply not run Steam at all, or any other launcher doo-dad, to get to the shit I own, I absolutely would. I already have a convenient list of all my installed programs that I care about - it’s called the Start menu. I also have some dedicated space for shortcuts, I call it “the desktop”.

IRUZZ · May 12, 2023

Hopefully this one doesn't fry unlike their motherboards

Xzi · May 12, 2023

Foxi4 said:
Oh, I’m quite aware - I still prefer a Windows environment. Sorry, I just do. The Steam Deck looks like a mighty fine and a well-engineered product, but given the choice between Linux and Windows, all else being equal (driver support and whatnot), I will pick Windows 10 out 10 times. In fact, if I could simply not run Steam at all, or any other launcher doo-dad, to get to the shit I own, I absolutely would. I already have a convenient list of all my installed programs that I care about - it’s called the Start menu. I also have some dedicated space for shortcuts, I call it “the desktop”.

Oh you spoiled whippersnappers, what with your fancy "graphical" user interfaces and instant-access shortcuts. Back in my day, we'd install a game over the span of two days from thirty different floppy disks, just for it to tell us our sound card was incompatible after the fact, and we LIKED it! Who needs new-fangled electricity for that matter, good ol' chisel and stone tablet renders at a perfectly playable one-hundredth of a frame per second. /s

Foxi4 · May 12, 2023

Xzi said:
Oh you spoiled whippersnappers, what with your fancy "graphical" user interfaces and instant-access shortcuts. Back in my day, we'd install a game over the span of two days from thirty different floppy disks, just for it to tell us our sound card was incompatible after the fact, and we LIKED it! Who needs new-fangled electricity for that matter, good ol' chisel and stone tablet renders at a perfectly playable one-hundredth of a frame per second. /s

You have to open a whole separate storefront and run it in the background at all times to play a video game - back in “my day” I just double-clicked an icon. We literally went a step backwards in terms of UI, I don’t know what’s there to brag about. I’m saying this without a hint of sarcasm - launchers suck ass.

Xzi · May 12, 2023

Foxi4 said:
You have to open a whole separate storefront and run it in the background at all times to play a video game - back in “my day” I just double-clicked an icon. We literally went a step backwards in terms of UI, I don’t know what’s there to brag about. I’m saying this without a hint of sarcasm - launchers suck ass.

I can agree to an extent, but the reasons people like Steam are one: because it's constantly being updated and improved, and two: because it saved us from all the other half-assed launchers and spaghetti code DRM. In the early 2000s every single PC game (even single-player) came with its OWN damn launcher, so double-clicking the shortcut would rarely take you straight into the game. The timeline in which that trend continued is much darker than this one, and I very much doubt that MS or Sony would've come back around to focusing on PC releases as a result.

Foxi4 · May 12, 2023

Xzi said:
I can agree to an extent, but the reasons people like Steam are one: because it's constantly being updated and improved, and two: because it saved us from all the other half-assed launchers and spaghetti code DRM. In the early 2000s every single PC game (even single-player) came with its OWN damn launcher, so double-clicking the shortcut would rarely take you straight into the game. The timeline in which that trend continued is much darker than this one, and I very much doubt that MS or Sony would've come back around to focusing on PC releases as a result.

Oh, this problem is alien to me since I always just linked to the main executable, so I saw the launcher once - on first boot, and that’s if I saw it at all. That’s neither here nor there though, Steam’s a fine storefront, probably the best out of the lot, but realistically you need to run several launchers from several storefronts in the background at all times these days if you want to cover the gamut of publishers out there, when that number should be zero unless you choose to run them. I’ll stick to my desktop, thanks. If a game requires me to run a dumbass client and it’s *not* because it’s some kind of always online shabam that actually needs it to function, I’m cracking the fuck out of it. “I click on the thing and it goes brrr” is the only acceptable user experience because we’re not running Commodore 64’s - I shouldn’t need a special loader to launch shit that’s on my computer already.

Kioku · May 12, 2023

Xzi said:
I can agree to an extent, but the reasons people like Steam are one: because it's constantly being updated and improved, and two: because it saved us from all the other half-assed launchers and spaghetti code DRM. In the early 2000s every single PC game (even single-player) came with its OWN damn launcher, so double-clicking the shortcut would rarely take you straight into the game. The timeline in which that trend continued is much darker than this one, and I very much doubt that MS or Sony would've come back around to focusing on PC releases as a result.

It most definitely did NOT save us from the other launchers. It just prolonged the leeches from finding a way to incorporate their bullshit into Steam and create further inconvenience and inconsistency. Why the everloving hell do I need to log in to multiple, separate accounts to play games?

Don’t even get me started on DRM…

The convenience factor is diminishing, and quickly. I agree with Foxi here, I miss the days of just launching the game and not needing something running the background at ALL TIMES just because they want me to prove that I have the privilege of playing the game.

Foxi4 · May 12, 2023

Kioku said:
It most definitely did NOT save us from the other launchers. It just prolonged the leeches from finding a way to incorporate their bullshit into Steam and create further inconvenience and inconsistency. Why the everloving hell do I need to log in to multiple, separate accounts to play games?

Don’t even get me started on DRM…

The convenience factor is diminishing, and quickly. I agree with Foxi here, I miss the days of just launching the game and not needing something running the background at ALL TIMES just because they want me to prove that I have the privilege of playing the game.

Yeah, but without Steam running all the time how will you know that you got a super duper amazing achievement?

Xzi · May 12, 2023

Foxi4 said:
That’s neither here nor there though, Steam’s a fine storefront, probably the best out of the lot, but realistically you need to run several launchers from several storefronts in the background at all times these days if you want to cover the gamut of publishers out there

Ehh Epic is the only real holdout left now, everybody else eventually came crawling back because that's obviously where the customer base is. Steam is run on startup for me and I haven't wanted nor needed to touch another launcher on PC for years, aside from emulators.

Foxi4 said:
“I click on the thing and it goes brrr” is the only acceptable user experience because we’re not running Commodore 64’s - I shouldn’t need a special loader to launch shit that’s on my computer already.

As much as I enjoyed some parts of the classic era of PC gaming, I'm simply being objective about others. The process was never truly that seamless, we just got used to it. I can't for the life of me imagine manually applying updates and then a no-CD crack to each of my thousands of Steam games. Not to mention going back to the days of not having universal controller support.

Kioku said:
Why the everloving hell do I need to log in to multiple, separate accounts to play games?

Because too many publishers skew more toward EA than Valve on the greedy/stupid alignment chart. That wouldn't be any different if Steam didn't exist, those shitty publishers would simply have a lot more influence over the PC gaming space.

Kioku said:
The convenience factor is diminishing, and quickly.

It doesn't really work that way. Steam has always been exponentially more convenient and feature-rich than the alternatives we've been presented with over the decades, and that's what enabled it to grow as large as it has. Double-clicking a game in your library is no more difficult than double-clicking a shortcut on your desktop.

Kioku said:
I agree with Foxi here, I miss the days of just launching the game and not needing something running the background at ALL TIMES just because they want me to prove that I have the privilege of playing the game.

Again I hate to rain on the parade here, but there is no timeline in which developers/publishers simply give the users absolute freedom. Not under capitalism, anyway. As high-speed internet began to become more prevalent and therefore made piracy more convenient, they were always going to push for more intrusive DRM. To the extent that some of it was actually capable of bricking your PC.

If something is going to be running itself in the background at all, it's undeniably preferable that it makes itself known and enhances the user experience. Otherwise it's just malware.

Kioku · May 12, 2023

Xzi said:
Ehh Epic is the only real holdout left now, everybody else eventually came crawling back because that's obviously where the customer base is. Steam is run on startup for me and I haven't wanted nor needed to touch another launcher on PC for years, aside from emulators.

As much as I enjoyed some parts of the classic era of PC gaming, I'm simply being objective about others. The process was never truly that seamless, we just got used to it. I can't for the life of me imagine manually applying updates and then a no-CD crack to each of my thousands of Steam games. Not to mention going back to the days of not having universal controller support.

Because too many publishers skew more toward EA than Valve on the greedy/stupid alignment chart. That wouldn't be any different if Steam didn't exist, those shitty publishers would simply have a lot more influence over the PC gaming space.

It doesn't really work that way. Steam has always been exponentially more convenient than the alternatives we've been presented with over the decades, and that's what enabled it to grow as large as it has.

Again I hate to rain on the parade here, but there is no timeline in which developers/publishers simply give the users absolute freedom. Not under capitalism, anyway. As high-speed internet began to become more prevalent and therefore made piracy more convenient, they were always going to push for more intrusive DRM. To the extent that some of it was actually capable of bricking your PC.

If something is going to be running itself in the background at all, it's undeniably preferable that it makes itself known and enhances the user experience. Otherwise it's just malware.

None of this changes how I feel about what we're forced to do.

..and yes, being forced to login to multiple accounts/launchers is taking away convenience.

Also, that last bit is irrelevant.

tech3475 · May 12, 2023

Scarlet said:
Apologies, it's the UK PR team I'm in contact with so it's the UK press releases I have handy. I'm fairly sure it is coming to the US around the same time, and I think it's slightly cheaper in the US ($699 I think, which works out £140 cheaper holy wow conversion rates hit the UK again).

Don’t forget, the US doesn’t use VAT but instead sales tax which is added at the time of sale.

$699*120%=$838.80 (or £673.84 via Google as of posting). So about £25 in the difference with UK VAT applied.

Scarlet · May 12, 2023

tech3475 said:
Don’t forget, the US doesn’t use VAT but instead sales tax which is added at the time of sale.

$699*120%=$838.80 (or £673.84 via Google as of posting). So about £25 in the difference with UK VAT applied.

Ahh that is interesting. Is it done that way so items have a base price, and states can individually decide how much the sales tax should be? I do remember reading something about people setting their 3DS region to a certain state to avoid paying tax.

Xzi · May 12, 2023

Kioku said:
..and yes, being forced to login to multiple accounts/launchers is taking away convenience.

I don't disagree, and that's precisely why we'd be so much worse off without Valve/Steam's influence on the industry. Every single game would have its own launcher/DRM, and every single publisher would have its own account system (not just some of the AAA ones). Shit sucks, but it could always be worse. Alternately, the grass is always greener on the other side.

ZeroFX · May 13, 2023

doubt the usability is as good as the deck

Foxi4 · May 13, 2023

Xzi said:
I don't disagree, and that's precisely why we'd be so much worse off without Valve/Steam's influence on the industry. Every single game would have its own launcher/DRM, and every single publisher would have its own account system (not just some of the AAA ones). Shit sucks, but it could always be worse. Alternately, the grass is always greener on the other side.

The reason why the launcher is always running and you have to use it to launch games is to upsell. There is nothing Steam does that it couldn’t do if it ran exclusively as a system service with hotkey interrupts. Even “universal controller support” is something that should be embedded in the OS, not handled by Steam. It imposes arbitrary limitations and complicates something that used to be simple - you can “deny the timeline” all day long, I’ve lived through it lol. Operation “Crack Everything” is-a-go, reclaim the desktop.

subcon959 · May 13, 2023

This seems to be the perfect opportunity to add my personal reason for disliking this Steam timeline... it caused the death of those beautiful big box PC releases. I have zero interest in compiling a digital library of thousands of games.. give me my big boxes and associated paraphernalia back!

@!#?@!

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