Can ‘Hollow Knight: Silksong’ Make Me Love the Xbox Handheld?
Hollow Knight: Silksong doesn’t need Xbox to capture our hearts. The sequel to the indie darling Hollow Knight blazes with a subtle intensity—the result of every squeak and bark from the hand-drawn enemies to the sweeping and foreboding music running like a river through the two abridged demo levels I played. Like the original Metroidvania-style side-scroller, Silksong is a game that could likely run on every system more powerful than a Tamagotchi without much fine-tuning. Even without playing the short demo players first had access to at Gamescom last month, the game sells itself. Xbox needs Silksong to help convince players they need its new handheld, the Asus ROG Xbox Ally.
Xbox brought the game to Gizmodo’s offices to give us hands-on experience with the game I already suspected I’d adore—and test out its first true novel hardware release of the past several years. The game is self-evident. It feels reminiscent of the first Hollow Knight yet distinct, with new protagonist Hornet focusing on swift dives and strikes with her needle and thread. As for Xbox, we still don’t know how much the handheld will cost, even though we’re edging closer to Microsoft and Asus’s shrinking October release window. The Xbox Ally X is running on the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme, the long-anticipated APU—or accelerated processing unit—built for handheld gaming. It’s been closing in on a year since AMD announced that chip. It’s only now that we’ll get to see what it’s capable of. Silksong is the wrong game to test that.
Xbox Ally X feels more Asus than Microsoft
In every way that matters, the higher-end Asus ROG Xbox Ally X is a sequel to the Asus ROG Ally X. I can see you’re confused. There are too damn many Xs in that name. It’s simpler to call the new device the ROG Xbox handheld. But that belies just how much of an iteration the handheld is. The Xbox Ally X is thicker by more than a few millimeters. It’s slightly heavier, and in my short experience with it, its fans were louder than the original device even when playing Silksong. When you lay both on the table, the difference is more stark. This is not a slim and low-profile Nintendo Switch 2. This is not an Xbox—a simple and straightforward console. The ROG Xbox Ally is a handheld PC in every way that matters.
The grips are meant to resemble an Xbox controller, and for that, it may be the most comfortable to use long-term compared to every other Steam Deck-like device available. The Xbox Ally X weighs 1.58 pounds, but in my 1.5 hours of play, I never felt my arms growing fatigued holding it up. Just like the Ally X from 2024, the face buttons and sticks had the kind of presence on my fingers that helps me sink into the games running on its 7-inch 1080p IPS display. Silksong seemed bright and vibrant on the glossy display. The surprise improvement was from its triggers. They’re larger, and it meant that one of my colleagues with much smaller hands than me could still hit each bumper without having to slide their hand up the grips.
Handheld Windows 11 mode with Xbox UI is unfinished
The hardware is self-evident. The Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X are meant to both run an all-new version of Windows 11 built specifically for the small screen. There’s an all-new Xbox button on the left-hand side of the handheld, which brings up the main menu that’s built as an extension of the existing Xbox Game Bar on PC. Xbox stressed that the software was unfinished. Hitting the ROG button still brought up the Asus Armoury Crate software to adjust brightness, volume, and performance settings. The UI could change by release in October.
I didn’t get to experience any of that. The new version of Windows 11 is supposed to dual-boot with the operating system as the regular desktop environment and a new version that limits several background tasks. This new version is meant to enhance performance when gaming. These background processes are sapping performance in all versions of Windows 11, and it’s only now that Microsoft is modifying its operating system to enhance gaming. Xbox knows it now needs to compete with SteamOS. Valve’s handheld-centric operating system is Linux-based with the addition of a compatibility layer for all those games that won’t work on the open-source platform. Recent tests have proved handhelds run better on SteamOS than Windows. Microsoft needs to show that players can stick with Windows without losing out on all their favorite apps.
The Xbox handheld could be great for people who don’t mind dragging around a larger handheld. Hollow Knight: Silksong is already shaping up to be great, but it’s not a game built to help us test what the device is capable of. Xbox needs to sell their handheld for prices console gamers expect to spend. Otherwise, most players will be playing Team Cherry’s Metroidvania somewhere—anywhere—else.
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