Nvidia has dropped the price of its hand-held gaming system by $50 ahead of its June 27th release date, following requests from gamers. The Shield will now cost $299 at launch instead of the $349 price tag, with the GPU producer amending the price for those who pre-ordered the Android-based device which can stream games from a PC over a local network.
The company blog claims that it has “heard from thousands of gamers that if the price was $299, we’d have a home run. So we’re changing the price of Shield to $299.” Despite the price cut, it still works out to be relatively expensive compared to similar devices, with the Ouya costing $99, the Wikipad going for $249, and Mad Catz’s Project M.O.J.O. aiming for the $100 mark, not to mention the various Android tablets already on sale.
Powering the Shield is a quad-core Tegra 4 processor with 2GB of RAM, with a five-inch 720p flip-up display and 16GB of storage. Shaped like a game controller and with similar controls, it is able to wirelessly stream video from a computer equipped with an Nvidia GeForce graphics card, with inputs from the controller being relayed back to the source. It can also play Android games without needing to stream.
