#51: The ROG Ally X has leaked

The ASUS ROG Ally X has leaked, doubling battery life, internal storage and more.

Hi, hello, and... bonjour!

Welcome to a new edition of the overkill digest newsletter, your go-to newsletter for all things handheld gaming.

I'm currently in the south of France to visit family (Aix-en-Provence). I used the opportunity to shoot a video on everything I'm packing for these types of trips. While I'm still editing this, you can subscribe to the YouTube channel now to get notified when it goes live.

…and with that, let's get to this week's news!

Big this week

The ROG Ally X has leaked early. Initially teased early this month, ASUS has since confirmed that the successor of the ROG Ally will be called the ROG Ally X. But similar to the Steam Deck OLED, the Ally X is more of a mid-cycle refresh than a proper successor.

Sean Hollister at The Verge went hands-on with a prototype of the device, though he wasn't allowed to turn it on or compare it to his own ROG Ally. He wrote back then:

Imagine a black ROG Ally [...]. That’s how the ROG Ally X looks from the front: same big screen bezels, same glossy cover glass, same button layout, same speaker placement, almost the same exact shape throughout. But instead of palm rests with bumpy corners, you now get smooth curves.

Early leaks also reported that this device will have a much larger battery and up to 24 GB of memory.

Well, now, thanks to leaks from videocardz.com, we learned much, much more: According to videocardz, the device will come with the same Z1 Extreme APU and the same 7-inch 1080p120 screen.

But as we already learned from Hollister, the shape has changed since the device now needs to hold a whopping 80Wh battery (the MacBook I'm writing this on has around 70Wh). It was also confirmed that it will come with 24 GB of memory and one Terabyte of internal storage (up from 512 GB). It will also drop the proprietary XG Mobile connector ASUS used in the older device for a USB-C 4.0 connector, in addition to the already available USB-C 3.2. This sounds to me like we will be able to use more than just ASUS' own eGPUs going forward. Also, Hollister added that on his preview sample, the bottom was taped, which hopefully(!) means we get a bottom port.

All in all, this sounds like a decent upgrade. I still would have liked an OLED screen, but these changes are significant enough that I'm considering upgrading to the device whenever it gets released. I like my Ally, and ASUS has shown over the months that they take this device seriously with update after update.

Currently, the announcement date is planned for early June during Computex, and I expect it to be released a month or two later.

In other news

Ubuntu can run on a Nintendo Switch and all of the internal hardware is working, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and sleep mode. Here is a step-by-step guide if you want to do it yourself (it doesn't look easy, though).
A new study shows that PC gaming is growing faster than console gaming. PC game sales (including microtransactions and other digital purchases) grew by 8.4% in 2023 compared to 2022. Consoles only saw a 0.3% increase in the same period, while mobile gaming shrank by about 2%. However, mobile and console gaming is still much larger than PC gaming at $89.9 billion and $52.4 billion, respectively, compared to PC gaming's $39 billion. This might be one explanation for why Sony is focusing much more on PC gaming lately.
The next Call of Duty will be called Black Ops 6 and will be announced on June 9th.
The Witcher 3 RedKit is now live. RedKit is the name of CD Project Red's (CDPR) modding tool. CDPR had already released another tool called ModKit earlier in The Witcher 3's lifespan, but compared to the new tool, the old one was fairly limited. With RedKit, modders could create completely new regions and storylines, and even port older games into The Witcher 3. Depending on how long you've been reading this newsletter, you know how bullish I am on modding. I'm, after all, currently replaying Skyrim with around 3000 mods (I'm not joking!), and I plan to later play a heavily modded Fallout 4 and a heavily modded Cyberpunk 2077 again. And now I will definitely add The Witcher 3 to that list.
The next Xbox might just be a reference design. Jez Corden from Windows Central has heard that the next Xbox will be a reference design for other manufacturers. This basically means that while Microsoft will release their own Xbox, it will be more like a custom PC that other manufacturers can use as "inspiration" to release their own Xbox-like devices. Talking of Jez Corden...
The next DOOM is called DOOM: The Dark Ages. Corden also heard that the next DOOM will be announced on June 9th, have a medieval setting and release on Xbox, Windows, and PlayStation. June will be exciting!
A new MSI Claw BIOS update increases performance by 30%. I don't have a Claw to test these claims, but MSI reports that the new update boosts performance in different games significantly, helping it to (as per MSI) outperform the ROG Ally in games like Fallout 4, Diablo 4, Helldivers 2, Elden Ring, and more.
Chris has shared the State of Switch survey results for 2024, including this video overview of what folks really think of the Nintendo Switch in 2024. Plenty of interesting tidbits here, such as most folks think the next Switch will launch for $400 bucks.
IGN Entertainment acquired Eurogamer, VG247, Rock Paper Shotgun, and more. This might be a little too meta for this newsletter, but the media company behind IGN has bought Gamer Network, another media company that includes GamesIndustry.biz, Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, VG247, and Dicebreaker. Gamer Network also holds shares in other media outlets like Digital Foundry and Hookshot (yet another media company publishing multiple websites). Unfortunately, this came with layoffs. As a journalist here on overkill, and someone whose day job is at a newspaper, deals like this are a sign of a suffering media landscape. So while overkill.wtf is far from being successful, I'm very happy we're independent. (So, thanks a ton for reading this little newsletter every week!)