Sarah Bond explains why Xbox cancelled its handheld console

The president of Xbox clarifies why Microsoft opted to collaborate with ASUS instead of developing its own portable device.

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Over the past few months, there has been a lot of talk about Microsoft’s plans in the field of portable consoles. Everything pointed to the Xbox team having worked not only in collaboration with ASUS to launch the ROG Xbox Ally, but also on a portable console of their own development. However, the company ultimately decided to focus on the alliance with ASUS and abandon its internal project.

Now, Sarah Bond, president of Xbox, has explained the reasons behind this decision. According to the executive, the move was mainly related to the speed of development and innovation capacity offered by the joint work with ASUS, compared to the challenges of creating a product from scratch within Microsoft.

Xbox chose to move forward with ASUS to innovate faster

In a recent interview with Variety, Bond explained that betting on an external partner allowed them to accelerate the process and offer a more polished experience from launch:

We created ROG Xbox Ally to transform the experience and take it to the next level in a way that we could do together much faster and in a much more innovative way than if we worked separately.

The reasoning makes sense: developing an internal portable console would have meant a huge effort in research, manufacturing, and logistics, while ASUS already had the necessary infrastructure and technical expertise thanks to its ROG line.

On the other hand, Bond also recognized that the current hardware market is complex, especially in the midst of a price escalation of consoles and components. Xbox preferred to reduce risks by betting on a strategic collaboration that allows them to move forward without slowing down their plans for next-generation hardware.

Thus, the ROG Xbox Ally has become the spearhead of Xbox’s expansion beyond the living room, and a clear example of Microsoft’s desire to take its ecosystem to any possible screen.