With the release of the Asus ROG Ally, many were wondering if other big, notable brands will also release a handheld gaming PC of their own. We posed this question to Acer, and we were told that at the moment, the Taiwanese company has no intention to release a competitor to the ROG Ally or Valve’s Steam Deck.
This confirmation came from the COO and president of IT products business at Acer, Jerry Kao, in a group interview. According to him, demands for handheld gaming consoles are not quite there yet for the company to enter the market. “We have to find the right timing,” as he puts it.
We approached Kao after the group interview for further clarification, and he added that Acer – through the Acer Gaming division – is the official distributor of the Steam Deck in Taiwan. With this in mind, the company is certainly familiar with the demand of the handheld gaming console, even if it’s only limited to Taiwan.
So for the foreseeable future, we won’t be seeing any handheld gaming PC from Acer, even though the AMD Ryzen Z1 series chips that power the ROG Ally will be offered to other brands in due time. But hey, the handheld gaming PC landscape could change rapidly in the near future, so it’s still possible we’ll see an ROG Ally or Steam Deck competitor from Acer.