“The major functionality – gaming – is all there. Shield runs ‘stock’ Android, but NVIDIA’s TegraZone curated app space is downright beautiful. Some thought was put into that UI. From there, you can play your Shield-optimized games, purchase new ones, and (if you have the proper NVIDIA graphics card on your PC), use Shield to control games being played on a PC gaming rig. The latter feature will launch in beta. We’ve used it twice now, and it’s surprisingly lag-free, though it does have the occasional connection hiccup.” I don’t really know what to think of this thing. It looks insane and I don’t see it competing with smartphones and other handheld gaming devices, but it does have some cool technology and I must admit that as a gamer, I’d love to have one. I have no idea where this will go.
at that price point, specially without a single “gotta have” exclusive title(s) at launch.
This is a really niche product, IMHO, and will not do much in the marketplace as a whole. It is riddled with problems and shortcomings if you compare it to what we already have:
* Splashtop Streamer already provides the capability of streaming games from your PC and supports touchscreen, gamepads and mouse+kb.
* The 5″ screen is the only one available and won’t please everyone.
* If you intend to mostly play Android-games with it why not just buy a GameKlip (http://buy.thegameklip.com/) and attach that to your existing Android-phone or tablet?
* It ties up a PC completely if you want to play PC-games on it, the PC cannot be used for anything else in the meantime.
* If you wanna play on-the-go you’re still limited to emulating old consoles or to the shallow Android-games.
* It requires a pretty hefty GPU on the PC and doesn’t work with AMD GPUs.
There will obviously be some enthusiasts who will hail this as the 2nd and 3rd coming of the Christ, some collectors who just like odd gadgets and a few people who buy it just to try it, but alas, I cannot see this as ever becoming a major hit or even becoming profitable for NVIDIA.
This thing is gonna be able to play almost every console, arcade, and computer game from the early 80’s to at least the mid-90’s, and you consider this a bad thing? Hell, that’s the main reason for getting this thing, IMO
We’re talking hundreds or even thousands of great games that you’ve probably never played before. The Tegra 3 on the Nexus 7 came just shy of being able to play all of my favorite Midway arcade games from the 90’s at full speed, such as NARC and Mortal Kombat. I don’t think the Tegra 4 will have these issues. IMO, if you’re looking for the ultimate portable emulation device, this is pretty much it. It even has HDMI out, so you can hook it up to a TV when you’re at home. About the only thing its missing is a method to flip the screen into portrait mode. Because, afterall… who wants to play Frogger in landscape? 
As for the price, if you pay anything less than $300 for a handheld with these specs, you’re probably looking at one of those cheap-ass, low-quality Chinese devices. Even a Nexus 4, which is pretty much sold at cost, went for $350, and that had no physical controls, no SD card slot, and half the RAM of the Shield.
So why not use your phone for this? Well, I guess you can… depending on how much you value battery life. As for modern PC-based games and Android IAP titles, meh… I couldn’t care less. This will probably be the last gaming device I’ll need for the rest of my life, or at least until it dies. But I’ll get the extended warranty in case something bad happens
Edited 2013-05-14 23:03 UTC
Being able to emulate old consoles isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, the bad thing is that smartphones and tablets are just as capable of it! I can run all consoles up to and including PSOne on my aging Galaxy Note just fine, and anything more recent should be capable of even more.
A tablet would also kill the portability aspect of it though. Plus, there aren’t ANY Android tablets in the 7″ range with an HDMI out port that I’d actually want to use as a general-purpose tablet, as the Nexus 7 is still the best buy far in that size. We’ll see if Google gives us something new at I/O tomorrow
The nexus 4 has 2GB of ram.
Yeah but, if you’re gonna play MK (which I did, all the time back then) you’d probably need to at least take a controller with you. A gamepad’s ok, but MK really benefits from an arcade-style joystick especially when you get into doing the really complex moves and combos. Killer Instinct (not Midway I know) was another of my all-time favorites, and that one you would really need a joystick to play well as its combos make MK look like a child’s toy. Ah would I love to play those again, but working KI and KI2 roms are tricky to get now.
That’s why I’ve not understood the demand for emulators on touch screens. Sure you can *do* it, but those old games flat out were not designed for it; I think of it as exactly the reverse of what Microsoft tried to do with Windows 8.
the people who used this seemed to enjoy it. more than a few sites said it was one of, or the best device at CES. doesn’t mean they’ll buy it, or that it’s worth it, but they enjoyed it.
Absoulutly pointless and uneccesary product.
Gizmondo effect…
Kochise
Gizwhat?
I suspect that one of the main purposes of this product is to showcase the new Tegra 4 processor in a good, clean implementation.