Nvidia's Shield

I've been keeping my eye on Nvdia's Shield for months now. At first glance, you might think that the Shield is just another portable gaming device, akin to the Vita or 3DS. In reality, however, it is much, much more -- in a way. The Shield runs on the Jelly Bean version of Android, packs an Nvidia Tegra 4 processor (the fastest processor on the mobile market), and a whopping 2 gigabytes of RAM. It's got a 5 inch 720p touchscreen display and a full-sized Xbox-360 style (with a button layout similar to a PS3) controller. Nvidia's Shield is an impressive piece of mobile hardware, leaving Sony's Vita and Nintendo's 3DS in the dust. All things considered, if the hardware found in the Shield were to be put inside any other off-contract Android phone, it'd sell at much, much more than the current asking price of $350.

Though the hardware is impressive, the Shield also packs in features not currently found in any other portable gaming device or Android phone. Along with the ability to play the current massive library of Android games, the Shield can also stream Steam games from any PC (with an Nvidia GTX 650Ti or above) to itself, or even on to an HDMI equipped television.

Personally, I love the idea of Nvidia's Shield. The ability to be able to stream PC games to it is fantastic, and a feature that hasn't really caught on in the mobile gaming world. But despite the features presented with the Shield, it isn't without its fair share of flaws. I personally don't see Shield becoming a very popular platform. At its very roots, the Shield is just another Android device. A very fancy, feature packed, powerful, game-centric device, but nonetheless, it's just another Android phone, only without the phone part. The Shield won't have dedicated games (other than generic TegraZone games), it doesn't have any physical media "game cartridge" ports, and at $350, it's just expensive (only $50 less than the PS4's launching price). A download-only system really isn't the best idea for a mobile gaming platform, as seen with Sony's PSPgo. I sincerely hope that Nvidia can really do well with the Shield, and manage to make it a hit, but I honestly can't foresee them being able to do much with it. With Nvidia basically selling a powerful Android phone as a gaming device, will people really want to shell out $350 for it? I personally think not.