The Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 aren’t the only new consoles coming this year. Nvidia has announced the final release date and price of the portable Android-powered console announced in January, the Nvidia Shield. The Tegra 4-powered unit is an unusual hybrid, featuring a full-sized console style controller with a 5 inch, multi-touch 1280×720 screen attached. The unit also has HDMI output to send its video to a TV, and if you have the right Nvidia graphics card in your computer you can also stream PC games to the Nvidia Shield.
“We’ve heard from thousands of gamers that if the price was $299, we’d have a home run,” wrote GeForce product line manager Jason Paul in a blog post about the announcement. “So we’re changing the price of Shield to $299. We want to get Shield into the hands of as many gamers as possible. That’s because we think they’ll have the same reaction to it as thousands of gamers already have: joy.”
Newegg, GameStop, Micro Center and Canada Computers will all have Shield on June 27, according to Nvidia. Whether or not the unit gets any significant sales, priced at $50 more than a PS Vita and more than many tablets, is another issue. It’s unknown what sort of marketing efforts Nvidia has planned, though it does say something that this announcement comes only one week before the product appears in stores.
Source: GI.biz
