Hmmm
Read quite a few mentions of the Shield but no mentions of any launch titles....
Nvidia is now taking orders for its Shield handheld gaming console, three days early, though the Android-running Tegra-powered gadget won’t make its way into punters’ hands before the end of next month at the earliest. Shield, which incorporates a clamshell design to hold a flip-up 5-inch, 1280 x 720 “retinal quality” screen, …
The games on the Android store are improving (mainly because of indie PC ports to the system rather than mobile games improving as a genre), but they're still not as good as a traditional mobile lineup for me. I really do like the design of this thing (though I'm not sure about the positioning of those analogs), but I can't justify spending way more I would on a Vita on something that only plays Android games.
But...can it play Crysis?
(Sorry, just had to throw that in.)
But seriously, it mentions Steam, but Steam on Android is more an extension of the Steam interface rather than a gaming portal—unless that is changing. It would be something if longtime Valve favorites like Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 were to make the jump (TF2 was the first Valve game to join the penguins, after all), but I'm not getting my hopes up.
Also, I'd be interested to see if other powerful Android phones like the HTC One and Samsung GS4 can somehow get in on the party in some way.
"to justify as a peripheral, not good enough to replace a PC or one of the coming consoles as a gaming platform, and has insufficient launch titles for it to make sense as a player's only game machine. It looks nice, though." What about as a MOBILE gaming platform? I used to have power adapters and cables for the kids to run two laptops in the back of the car for long journeys, but when I suggested tablets the kids said "no thanks, they don't have any good games" - if this can offer some good games, and play movies and music, it will be a better long distance journey option than the iPad, Surface Pro and comparable to the other portable games devices from Sony and co.
HDMI port and 2kHD?
So a handheld portable AND Flash based Console for 42" HDTV in a controller.
So either it will be a Jaguar or WII in Sales depending on games. People aren't going to buy a Console any more to simply to play CD / DVD /.BD (Sony PS1 / PS2 / PS3). Maybe they think Flash makes Optical Drives and HDDs obsolete for gaming.
was an interesting idea, and this looks to be an extension of that (but primarily, or solely, a games machine, rather than a phone).
The thing that holds back Android games (in my view, at least) if the terrible controls - touch screen only is rubbish for anything beyond puzzlers like Angry Birds - so this is the obvious solution. Whether people want an Android machine for gaming, when the DS is already so dominant in the handheld sector, remains to be seen (my gut says that they don't, and this will go the way of the Lynx).