X

Nvidia plans to ship Shield gaming device on July 31

After a month-long delay, the Android-based portable gaming device will ship to preorder customers at the end of the month.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers.
Expertise I have more than 30 years' experience in journalism in the heart of the Silicon Valley.
Steven Musil
2 min read
Nvidia's Shield will begin shipping to customers at the end of July. Eric Franklin/CNET

Nvidia plans to begin shipping its Shield portable gaming device to customers on July 31, about a month later than its original shipping target date.

The chipmaker began informing people who preordered the Android-based device of the new delivery date on Sunday via e-mail, a copy of which was published by Android Police:

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. The device, which was demoed at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, was originally expected to ship on June 27 but was delayed by and unspecified "mechanical issue" with a "third-party component." Originally priced at $349, the Shield's price was cut to $299.

The Nvidia Shield is a portable gaming system that unites the controller and a 5-inch 1,280x720-pixel touch screen into one single package. The Shield can handle all Google Play apps and stream PC games from Nvidia-based computers through a Wi-Fi connection. It's one of the first to house the much-anticipated Tegra 4 processor and sets itself apart from others with its ability to stream full PC games over a Wi-Fi network.

It also features 16GB of storage, Mini-HDMI, Micro-USB 2.0, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, and a microSD card slot for storage expansion. 802.11n 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi, integrated speakers, and a headphone jack round out the specifications.