The ROG Xbox Companion The Xbox app has received a new software update, which introduces quality-of-life improvements for the Microsoft and ASUS gaming handheld. ASUS's ROG Xbox accessories are as close as it gets to a native handheld Xbox gaming console, which means they get plenty of support from Microsoft and act as a sort of spearhead for the development of a custom, gaming-focused Windows OS.
Since their release, ROG Xbox Ally handhelds have received several updates that often introduce completely new features for the devices. While Xbox Ally X is significantly faster than the basic Ally, the latter is not left out of the way. Instead, the entire Xbox Companion platform is getting improvements from default game profiles to improved library loading times. Post-launch support for Xbox accessories has been widely compared to Valve's Steam Deck, which works in ASUS' favor as it supports the longevity of the handhelds.
ROG Xbox Companion can be cheap
After Gamescom, reports suggest that the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X handhelds may have been priced as low as $599 and $999 at one point.
ROG Xbox Companion gets full screen experience improvements and more
The latest update for ROG Xbox Companion adds several welcome changes to the Xbox overlay. Most notable are the new Display and Projection UI tabs, which allow players to customize display resolution, projection modes, and docked display output right from the Xbox Game Bar. Users can now also change where notification pop-ups are displayed, which is admittedly not a groundbreaking development but nice. It's not quite an impressive list compared to Steam Deck's March 2026 update, but Microsoft has yet to release official patch notes, and the UI update was first spotted by ROG Ally Life.
One thing to note about the new batch of improvements to the Xbox overlay is that it's effectively setting the stage for the upcoming release of Windows-based automatic super resolution, which is slated for release in April 2026. This feature is going to be Microsoft's in-house upscaling solution that is virtually bound to improve game performance, but it's specifically going to all Windows hardware devices. Like ROG Companion. Incidentally, this is potentially going to give them a big leg-up on Valve's gaming handheld, which is still stuck with the old FSR 1.0 upscaler, lacking additional (and complicated) user intervention. As of now, Auto Super Resolution is admittedly still a big unknown, and banking on it as a silver bullet for Xbox-assisted game performance is unfair.
While ROG Xbox Ally's March 2026 update isn't massively impressive in itself, it does play into Microsoft's broader plans for the Xbox and beyond. Of course, all the improvements featured as part of this upgrade are also available on any other device that might be using the Xbox app for gaming, including Windows PCs. One can argue whether it's true that ROG Xbox Ally is one of the best innovations of 2025, but there's no denying that it's helping Xbox make a great experience on PC through app updates.
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ROG Xbox companion devices aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they do their job very well and serve as great indie and mid-level gaming options. Their biggest problem was never the hardware but their reliance on Windows rather than a bespoke gaming-focused OS, which is one area where the Steam deck delivers an incomparably superior experience. That may change in the coming days, however, as Xbox improves OS-level optimizations and automatically releases Super Resolution.
