Hardware manufacturer Asus could be preparing to announce its Xbox-branded handheld soon.
A teaser video posted by the ROG Ally manufacturer on Monday shows the company’s ‘virtual AI pet’ Omni applying new upgrades to himself: “marathon stamina”, “more capacity”, “faster speeds” and “fresh look”.
As he enters a large booth to get the upgrades applied, an Asus ROG Ally handheld and a Republic of Gamers branded ‘Raikiri’ controller (which works on both PC and Xbox) also fall into the booth with him.
The implication, then, is that the upgrades will be applied to the handheld, suggesting improved battery life, increased storage, improved processing power and a hardware redesign compared to the ROG Ally.
This would all appear to relate purely to Asus hardware, but a pair of posts on X imply that this new handheld being teased is the previously reported ‘Project Kennan’, an Asus-developed handheld which can play PC and Xbox games.
Asus’ post promoting the video reads “our little robot friend is cooking something up”, but is then accompanied by the hashtags #PlayALLYourGames and #NextLevelGaming.
What’s more, the official Xbox account then replied to the post with a meme of a monkey looking suspiciously around (as spotted by Eurogamer), suggesting it may have some involvement in the announcement.
A report earlier this month claimed that Asus’s Xbox-branded handheld could debut later this year, but that because any such launch is reliant on Microsoft’s platform work, timelines could change.
The platform work is reportedly codenamed ‘Project Bayside’, and aims to deliver “a common Xbox UI across multiple devices to help combine Windows and Xbox”.
The alleged plans follow comments from Microsoft’s VP of Next Generation, Jason Ronald, who said earlier this year that any future handheld device would combine “the best of Xbox and Windows.”
“I would say it’s bringing the best of Xbox and Windows together because we have spent the last 20 years building a world-class operating system, but it’s really locked to the console,” Ronald told The Verge. “What we’re doing is we’re really focused on how do we bring those experiences for both players and developers to the broader Windows ecosystem.”
