Nvidia Shield Console

[HotHotHeat]

What are people's first impressions of this? I think it's finally my PS3 media centre repalcement.

Nvidia just announced an Android gaming console. The latest Shield (previous entries include a gaming tablet and before that an all-in-one game controller plus screen) is the "world's first 4K Android TV console." The device itself is thin and sports the familiar sharp design aesthetic (with green glow). It supports decoded 4K video at 60Hz. The Shield will launch in May for $199, game controller included, alongside the company's new Grid game-streaming service.
The non-gaming bluetooth remote ("Shield remote") looks fairly minimal and features a "one click, one touch voice search" (à la Amazon's Fire TV remote) and a headset jack for listening quietly (à la Roku remotes). It appears that it won't be bundled with the box itself.
Nvidia's home console is powered by its Tegra X1, its new mobile "superchip" announced in January. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is touting just how much more powerful this Shield is compared to current set-top boxes like Roku and Apple TV — but it's also about twice the performance of the Xbox 360 at half the power output.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/3/814...tv-set-top-box

[Hack&Lube]

As a media center device, sure...

As a gaming console, I don't know. Underneath it's still on the Android platform and while there are some games that can take advantage of it's hardware, 90% of the library is still going to be games designed to work on the small screen, on your phone. They just will not be that good...or they will be ports of ancient PC games (like KOTR, Portal 1, Half-Life 1, etc. as discussed in the article). For a 4K, living room experience...there's just no real point to playing Android games on your big screen TV where all blurry textures and limited gameplay will be revealed for their weaknesses (or age).

[Thor]

Well its out, and looks like I'm going to get one. Anyone have it yet?

[FlameOn]

I've had one since release. It's a great media center box with the best codec support on the market. It has some of the game streaming content AND you can stream games from your PC provided you have a Nvidia video card. You will not have anywhere near as good of a gaming experience as with regular modern consoles, but I use it for emulators and legacy gaming just fine. It'll do everything up to Gamecube generation with the right app installed on it.