By Alessandro on 15 May, 2013: published about 3 years ago

Nvidia’s Shield Finally Has A Price, And It Isn’t Pretty

Nvidia had somewhat of an uphill battle ahead of them when the revealed the Shield. The small device that is essentially a controller with a screen debuted at CES this year, with the company boasting about its ability to play Android titles. Ok, and?

The main feature that many have been looking forward to concerning the Shield is its ability to stream PC titles onto its screen, effectively allowing you to play your PC titles on a smaller screen, using a controller. Genius, right? Regardless, it’s somewhat impressive, if not gimmicky, technology, but with the announcement of the Shield’s price it’s just turned into ridiculous.

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Nvidia is currently accepting pre-orders for the device, which officially goes on sale next month for the not so cheap price of $349 (around R3200). The Shield will ship with a Tegra 4 mobile processor, a pretty powerful piece of hardware in the Android market. The Shield will feature a screen that is capable of displaying images in 720p, as well as being multitouch. However, are you prepared to pay anything close to that for the Shield?

Let me put it into a little bit of perspective; first up, no one would ever pay that for Android titles. Ever. Next, PC streaming is still a bit too gimmicky to justify that price. On top of that, streaming will only work with GPU’s in Nvidia’s 600 series, meaning that you’ll need to fork out a pretty penny for a GPU in the first place. Then again, why not just use the money you’d spend on this and put it towards a new GPU or a second one to SLI, if you have a few notes burning holes in your jeans.

What exactly am I trying to say. Don’t buy this; don’t even look in its general direction. Seriously, this is not something you should be spending money on. Much like the Wii U and PlayStation Vita. Do you want to wake up sad every morning like owners of these gaming platforms?

Source: IGN

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Name: Alessandro Barbosa
Location: Johannesburg
Position: Ex-Editor, News

Alessandro has published 1939 posts. Read all of Alessandro's posts.

http://twitter.com/Pansyfaust Marco Bozza
~Avoiding~ not that I would pay to play Andoid games anyway, but being able to stream to it from my PC would be cool. Cool. Not amazing or earth shattering, simply cool. Why play on a tiny screen when I can jam on my 23″ HD screen?
reV
The price tag doesn’t look THAT bad TBH considering its functionalities both as an Android gaming device AND a streamer from compatible PC. And remember, the idea with these new Android standalone gaming devices is to push for more (or rather, any) major mainstream Android titles rather than your casual toilet games and shitty ports.
reV
Actually, the more I read the last paragraph, the more pissed off I get. “Don’t look in its general direction”? Really? Major companies TRYING to push for innovation on a platform with great potential for gaming and you are encouraging people to just turn away from the idea completely? Get fucked.
- Alessandro Barbosa
  It’s not that I’m trying to tell people to turn away from new ideas, I’m just saying that this is not a GOOD new idea.
  In what world would you be prepared to pay for hardware that’s main function is to play Android titles? Even high-end Android titles? If you’re going to be charging that much, create a new platform, like the PS Vita (Which also attempted the whole streaming business with the PS3).
  In terms of being able to stream from you PC, yes that’s cool new technology and I applaud that advance. However, it’s still incredibly pricey for that feature alone, not to mention you’d need to own a 600 series card for it to work in the first place.
  Basically, it’s just a cool piece of hardware, not revolutionary in the slightest Why should people take notice?
- reV
  What’s wrong with Android titles? Vast majority of them are free, some of them are great console ports that actually work horribly on typical android device touch screen but would work beautifully on a handheld (Metal Slug 3 and Blazing Star ports come to mind), some of them utilizes the touch screen beautifully and would still benefit from a bigger screen. Sure, currently you have nothing but casual games and ports (but at least they are all DIRT cheap), but this is the kind of thing we need to push for better titles, hell, EXCLUSIVE titles, INNOVATING titles to show up on the platform.
- Alessandro Barbosa
  Then if you’re that involved in Adroid games and want to support the developers in that section of the industry, why not opt for an Ouya instead? It’s primarly focused on Android gaming and costs literally less than a third of the Shield.
  Do you see where I’m coming from? I’m not adverse to Android gaming in any sense, but I do getting angry when gamers are clearly taken for a ride.
- reV
  No reason why you can’t support both, they are two very different machines with somewhat different target markets and very different purposes.
AG_Sonday
While the idea behind Shield is really cool, the price is insane and despite its innovations it will likely suffer a fate worse that that of the Vita.