Xbox Journalist Disputes Rumour About AMD Requiring 10M Units For First-Party Handheld

Earlier this week, you may have seen a rumour doing the rounds that Xbox’s dedicated first-party handheld (not the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally) was cancelled early in development to due to AMD wanting a commitment of 10 million units to justify making a custom SoC (system on a chip) for the device.

This came from a source known as KeplerL2 over on NeoGAF (and was later picked up by the likes of Insider Gaming), who advised that Microsoft didn’t want to take the risk on 10 million units due to the Steam Deck, ASUS ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go only selling a few million devices each.

They also claimed that it was supposed to be more of a “portable console like Sony is doing” rather than another PC-focused handheld, and it was said to have been cancelled “quite early in development”.

“AFAIK the handheld was cancelled because AMD wanted a commitment of 10m+ units to justify making a dedicated SoC, but with Steam Deck only selling ~5 million units and ASUS ROG/Lenovo Legion only selling 1-2 million MS didn’t want to take the risk.”

Now, hold that thought, because the rumour has been disputed by Windows Central’s Jez Corden. Taking to social media this week, Corden suggested that it’s “not even slightly true”, responding to the Insider Gaming report.

Corden suggests the reason the first-party handheld was shelved was because of a desire to focus more resources on the ROG Xbox Ally and build a software platform for it that would allow Windows to be optimised more effectively:

And, if we go back to June, The Verge’s Tom Warren also reported something similar, writing in his report that the first-party handheld was “essentially cancelled” due to Microsoft wanting to “focus on Xbox’s new software platform”.

Of course, we’re just taking everyone’s word for it here, and there have been no official statements from Microsoft (nor do we expect any), but it’s interesting to note that the company’s stock slipped slightly on Tuesday as an apparent result of the rumour – although to be honest, we think that was more of a coincidence than anything!

The fact remains that, regardless of what’s true and what’s not, the ROG Xbox Ally is Microsoft’s big focus from a handheld perspective right now, and it seems both versions of the device are shaping up really well ahead of launch.