cavalcade

"characters say "shit" several times. There's some guns and swords, but the enemies are all robots I think"

That's pretty much the general vibe in South Wales anyway, even when you're not playing a videogame.

You can see the exciting teraflops comparison in the other thread. Yes, an Ally is a lot more powerful than a Steam Deck.

The argument before us that essentially the Allys were PCs. So you could also put Office on them and use them as a desktop if you fancied it. That is now blurred if these machines are actual 100% gaming machines with a cut down OS. 800 is a guess, if MS are involved perhaps there'll be a hardware subsidy.

Also XBPlay is a good idea in practice, but if you're out and about and in hotels etc, having the games locally is a benefit.

This might confirm that the next gen of Xbox is simply devices, portable or desktop based, with the new gaming focused OS.

So, you've probably seen the news. MS enter the handheld arena (sort of) with a new, more ergonomic pair of Xbox branded ROG Allys based on the Z2 architecture.

Most notably from the announcement was that they will not be running full fat Windows, but a gaming focused version of it, promising enhanced performance and better operability. I would believe that as I think ArmoryCrate is very good on the Ally, even now. So a version of that over a resource optimised W11 would really be the best of all worlds. Steam OS is fine, but all the gaming stores, no hassle with DRM supported is interesting.

The hardware looks similar, just slightly better shaped. Not sure there's a clear price yet, but I can't see it being cheap, even for the cut down model. Maybe 800 quid and 500 quid? I'll be interested to see what it does to the price of the existing Ally X, as that could end up a very keenly priced bit of kit.

Anyway, not sure this would really change anyone's mind here about PC handhelds in general if they're already on board? Or would it? Especially if you're a SeriesX owner or already paying for Gamepass…

I think they ran out money in the last episode. Or had to do an emergency reshoot. You'll know it when you see it.

I watched Department Q on Netflix. It was absolute shit in bits, but lovely to see Edinburgh and bits of Scotland. It's basically grumpy English detective in Scotland solving a kerayzee missing person mystery (a woman being held in a bariatric diving chamber for…. reasons). Really needed to be a villain of the week, Mentalist style, as 9 episodes of tortuously slow UK programming just ain't it. I doubt it'll get a second season.