NVIDIA Shield To Start Shipping On July 31st

Get excited, potential purchasers of Nvidia's Shield handheld gaming device. NVIDIA’s Android-based portable gaming console – the Shield, was supposed to start shipping on June 27. However, due to a mechanical issue found out during the quality assurance testing, NVIDIA was forced to push its launch date back. The NVIDIA Shield will start shipping on July 31, according to an email issued to a Shield buyer. The full message went as follows: “We want to thank you for your patience and for sticking with us through the shipment delay of your SHIELD. We have great news to share with you – your SHIELD will ship on July 31st. Our goal has always been to ship the perfect product, so we made sure we submitted SHIELD to the most rigorous mechanical testing and quality assurance standards in the industry. We built SHIELD because we love playing games, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.”NVIDIA Shield comes with a 1.9 GHz Tegra 4 processor with 72-core GPU and 2GB of RAM. The portable console features a 5-inch 720p display, 16 GB internal memory, microSD card slot, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, microHDMI out, Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean and carries a price tag of $299. Pre-orders for the Shield opened up on May 14, the console seems to have generated quite a bit of hype particularly with their hardcore fans/customers. Nvidia still hasn't specified what said mechanical issue actually was nor has it clarified how the company managed to uncover the issue at one of the last possible moments prior to Shield's initial shipping date. To its credit, Nvidia does go to good lengths discussing how important quality is to the manufacturer in the follow-up email it sent today to announce the new shipping date. The Tegra 4-powered device is basically a gaming controller with a five-inch, 720p touchscreen attached to a top that folds up and down to cover the device. The controller portion looks a bit like your typical Xbox 360 controller: two analog sticks, a D-pad, buttons, and bumpers. The WiFi-friendly device also comes with an HDMI port and MicroSD slot if you'd like to display your gaming on a bit larger of a screen (up to 4K resolution supported for HDMI output) or or supplement the Shield's 16 gigabytes of internal storage with a wee bit more. Not only can the Shield tackle Android games, but it can also receive certain streamed games from your Nvidia-equipped PC