NVIDIA Shield Gets a Launch Date and a Price Cut: June 27th for $299
by Ryan Smith on June 20, 2013 9:36 AM EST
Earlier this morning NVIDIA sent out a press release offing an update on the launch of their forthcoming handheld console, Shield. When Shield was first made available for pre-orders back in May, NVIDIA announced that the console would ship in late June with a price tag of $349. Today’s press release serves as an update for that, giving shield a proper launch date and a new price.
Shield’s official launch date will be a week from now, June 27th, meeting NVIDIA’s original goal of shipping in late June (if only just). This is presumably for pre-orders; we don’t have any idea on what the launch quantity is like, or consequently whether there will be any Shield consoles available for “walk-in” sales on the 27th.
| NVIDIA SHIELD | ||||
| Shield | ||||
| SoC | NVIDIA Tegra 4 - 1.9 GHz | |||
| Display | 5-inch 720p "Retinal" Display | |||
| RAM | 2 GB LPDDR3 | |||
| Wireless Connectivity | 2x2:2 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi + BT 3.0, GPS | |||
| Storage | 16 GB NAND, microSD Expansion | |||
| I/O | microUSB 2.0, mini-HDMI, 3.5mm headphone | |||
| OS | Android 4.2.1, Updates from NVIDIA | |||
| Price | $299.00, Shipping June 27th | |||
Meanwhile the bigger news is that NVIDIA has also give shield a price cut ahead of its launch. Originally set to launch at $349, Shield is now launching for $50 less at $299, with all pre-orders being updated to reflect the reduced price. NVIDIA’s official rationale for this move is that “we’ve heard from thousands of gamers that if the price was $299, we’d have a home run.” Though with the announcement last week that Sony will launch their Playstation 4 console at $399 likely had some kind of impact on this, as it would have left a relatively small $50 price delta between the two consoles. Price was also a recurring complaint in the comments on our hands-on look at Shield earlier this month. Regardless of the reason however, we certainly have no objection to NVIDIA lowering the price of Shield.
Wrapping things up, we’ll have a full review on Shield after it launches next week. So in the meantime stay tuned.
Source: NVIDIA
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karasaj - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
Wow this is really cool. If I hadn't picked up a 7850 for my new PC this would actually be really tempting all of a sudden. I wish they had said this two weeks ago xDtodlerix - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
Source: NvidiaNOTE: PC Streaming will release as a BETA feature at launch**
**The PC streaming BETA will feature a select number of supported games from Steam and a set of recommended routers. After conclusion of the BETA period, users will receive a free software patch to the official release that includes expanded game support, broader Wi-Fi compatibility, feature enhancements, and any needed bug fixes based on BETA feedback.
chizow - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
I'm currently waiting on more information about PC streaming before committing as well. I have very little interest in a handheld console, much less an Android console, unless it were able to stream my PC content remotely. Streaming locally isn't that appealing, but if they could eventually develop it to the point I could stream it anywhere I had Wi-Fi access, I'd be sold instantly.nathanddrews - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
GeForce Experience (new feature of drivers) states that a "600 series" GPU is required for streaming, but I've read other places that a GTX-level 600-series GPU (650+) is actually required. What is it exactly? I don't suppose users with 580 SLI can install a 610 for streaming only? Or 7970GE, for that matter?aicom - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
It would theoretically possible to use another H.264 encoder, but Nvidia may have dedicated pathways in the hardware for transcoding the framebuffer to reduce latency. That or they just want to use hardware that they have control over.It would be nice to have an option to use a 3rd party H.264 encoder like QuickSync or a CPU-based encoder. If we get especially lucky, Nvidia could enable support for 3rd party GPUs as well but that probably will increase latency significantly because they can't use driver tricks to reduce latency. They'd have to use the standard APIs for capturing the screen.
Yorgos - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
Give it a 100$ or € price drop, make it available to install any linux distro with the appropriate driver support and this is going to be a hell of a gaming console to run any kind of emulator from gameboy and mame games.larsoncc - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
Couldn't you create the same PC-streaming-game experience with a smartphone, Splashtop, and a MOGA controller? For fun, I picked one up today to find out... Just on the Android side, the controller works great with emulators (with a third party driver). The trick will be to get it to send keys across to SplashTop.Wolfpup - Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - link
This thing's still an awesome piece of hardware that I have no idea what I'd do with it. If I could pull out Vita's SOC and replace it with this (which would be a nice bump...I think) that would rock, but...