Don't Expect A New Nvidia Shield Tablet Anytime Soon 67
During a small press gathering at CES in Las Vegas today, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company doesn't have any plans to resurrect the Shield Tablet, which launched in 2014, was last refreshed in 2015 and officially discontinued last year. "Shield TV is still unquestionably the best Android TV in the world," he said. "We have updated the software now over 30 times. People are blown away by how much we continue to enhance it." And more (unspecified) enhancements are coming, he said. TechCrunch reports: On the mobile side, though, the days of the Shield Tablet are very much over, especially now that the Nintendo Switch, which uses Nvidia's Tegra chips, has really captured that market. "We are really committed to [Shield TV], but on mobile devices, we don't think it's necessary," Huang said. "We would only build things not to gain market share. Nvidia is not a "take somebody else's market share company.' I think that's really angry. It's an angry way to run a business. Creating new markets, expanding the horizon, creating things that the world doesn't have, that's a loving way to build a business."
He added that this is the way to inspire employees, too. Just copying competitors and maybe selling a product cheaper, though, does nothing to motivate employees and is not what Nvidia is interested in. Of course, Huang left the door open to a future tablet if it made sense -- though he clearly doesn't think it does today. He'd only do so, "if the world needs it. But at the moment, I just don't see it. I think Nintendo did such a great job."
He added that this is the way to inspire employees, too. Just copying competitors and maybe selling a product cheaper, though, does nothing to motivate employees and is not what Nvidia is interested in. Of course, Huang left the door open to a future tablet if it made sense -- though he clearly doesn't think it does today. He'd only do so, "if the world needs it. But at the moment, I just don't see it. I think Nintendo did such a great job."
Wait a minute.... (Score:2)
This is the same CEO of the company who came to fame by crushing 3dfx and Matrox in the graphics card wars of the late 1990's and 2000's... right?
Now that they are huge, they suddenly aren't interested in stealing marketshare from their competitors?
Re: Wait a minute.... (Score:2)
Yes, but they did it by doing it better, not Microsoft of the 1990's giving a CEO hookers and blow on a yacht trip to get a corporation to ditch Novell for NT regardless of what the I.T. team thought. Doing it better is why they stay on top reputation wise. As far as graphics chips are concerned AMD is better positioned contract wise and even availability wise in laptops. I still go out of my way to get Nvidia due to old wounds from ATI that still hurt and I just am consistently amazed at what I can do with
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I'm consistently impressed with the performance of my ancient GTX480 card that I have in my "Wintendo" system. I have it hooked up to a TV with Windows 10 and Steam in Big Picture mode. My kids can play any of the games they want to play on it, and so can I. Sure, it doesn't do the latest AAA titles in stupid high resolution, but it plays Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams, Lego Lord of the Rings, and Mickey's Castle of Illusion without a problem, my kids think it's the greatest thing ever. With a Radeon I fe
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I have to agree - I don't live in a little box with just my stuff.
I had a conference room to take care of at my last job - and I was beating my head against the wall with "Why won't it make sound?" Turns out the "correct" Radeon drivers wouldn't do sound over HDMI, I had to find some fossilized ones to do it instead. No - I've had recent Radeon issues to compliment my old wounds.
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If an IT team thought those were the only choices in the '90s, they should be glad to have a job at Micky D's today.
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I could admin LANtastic as well, but I still thought Novell Netware was about the best thing going for small offices back then.
Re: Wait a minute.... (Score:2)
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I used 3Dfx before I used Nvidia. I still have my driver CD.....
Re:Wait a minute.... (Score:5, Informative)
This is the same CEO of the company who came to fame by crushing 3dfx and Matrox in the graphics card wars of the late 1990's and 2000's... right?
While my memory of that period may not be as clear 20+ year later, I think Nvidia was actually breaking new ground back then. Matrox made some wickedly fast 2d accelerated cards, but I don't seem to recall them ever having anything particularly compelling in the 3d market (the attempts they did make were either slow, poor quality, or both). 3dfx had some killer 3d performance, but every one of their cards was neutered in some form or another (required separate 2D card, limited resolution, only 16-bit color, 2D+3D in one card sacrificed performance).
Nvidia sort of created the perfect middle ground. A single card that could perform extremely good at both 2D and 3D (though not top of the line at either), great image quality, and not too pricey. And though my memory is less certain on this, I feel like they were earlier to have full opengl and better support for new direct3d features. And when the GeForce cards came out with the first implementations of programmable transform/lighting pipelines, that was the final nail in the coffin for most of the competition...you could have your cake AND eat it, and they'd even throw some extra sprinkles on the top for good measure.
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3dfx Voodoo 2 (1998) most certainly required a separate graphics card. It was only a 3D accelerator. Voodoo 3 (1999) had a VGA output and supported 16-bit color (plus dithering so it didn't look like total crap). The Nvidia RIVA TNT was released in 1998 and supported 32-bit color. Competing with the Voodoo 3 was the Geforce 256 which was the beginning of the end for 3dfx.
Re: Wait a minute.... (Score:2)
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I don't fall for Huang's feel-good explanation for a couple reasons... One, trash-talking AMD's new Radeon 7. Two, since the Switch basically does the Shield better than Nvidia was willing to, why fight a product that has all the games, too??
Chip CEOs throw shade at each other at CES: 'Lousy and nothing new'
Huang continued to criticize Su's stage moment, saying, “Wow, underwhelming, huh?"
“Weird launch," he added. "Maybe they thought of it this morning."
https://www.bizjournals.com/sa... [bizjournals.com]
The What Now? (Score:3)
Re: The What Now? (Score:2)
Their last device got landfill-binned for good reason.
What reason was that? I picked up a shield tablet pretty cheap a few years back thanks to the poor sales, but never understood why people didn't like them. I'm still using it today.
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They make the best android TV on the market. After 3 years of buying android tv boxes that actually ran the tablet version of android (which made using a remote difficult) I finally bit the bullet and bought the shield. It's old and still getting updates, run smooth, and plays everything I throw at it.
I wish I had started with the nvidia shield (TV not tablet). It would have been actually cheaper than all the android boxes I bought before that never updated.
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I think Jensen's an outstanding engineering team manager.
As a marketer, not so much.
Technical excellence is a wonderful aspiration, as is employee value recognition. All this notwithstanding, Wall Street will punish him mercilessly, and for good reasons (by their standards). They've cut his stock price into less than half of its peak, and NVIDIA isn't out of the woods.
Tuns out, yes, you have to sell something, and that something eventually needs to have margins somehow, and just being best doesn't count unl
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I wasn't expecting, but I was hoping for one.
I have nvidia shield from 2014 and I've been amazed on the continued support (OS Updates). Initially I bought it with gaming in the mind, but actually I haven't played games with it that much. The HDMI out is excellent and I would expect such a feature in all tables for the value add it gives. Unfortunately my shield has dropped one too many times and it has big crack across the screen, lost the stylus pen plus few scratches. I'd consider purchasing a new one if
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Beware Nvidia Shield TV is no where near as premium as they claim, latest updates were extremely poorly done, requiring three efforts. Shield TV needed to be rebooted nearly everyday and sometimes the reboots did not work and required repeated plugging and unplugging. At a guess the morons did not clear the cache prior to doing updates (passed on the possible solution), so stored data no longer matched applications causing repeated failures. So not so premium at all (it has been working since the last updat
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I've had the shield TV for about a month. The only time I have rebooted was to install a new update. I looked on the xda forums and didn't see many issues. Sorry the experience for you wasn't great. But honestly - try one of the android tv boxes on amazon. You will have a newfound respect for the shield.
Nintendo Switch (Score:3)
That's because the Nintendo Switch is practically the current incarnation of the NVidia Shield hardware.
Nintendo is doing a better job selling NVidia's Shield hardware than Nvidia ever could an Android device, so it would be counter-productive to compete with yourself with something that would have less appeal.
Again, it's about the apps!
BTW. There are rumours about a second-generation Switch coming up, supposedly sometime in the second half of this year.
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Additionally it wouldn't be surprising if there was a non-competition clause in nvidia's supplier contract, which prohibits nvidia from entering the market with a new device that would compete with the shield.
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true, it's all about the apps, but the switch has got none of the apps you would normally find on a tablet.
The last couple updates have made it unstable (Score:2)
been freezing on me about 4 times where I had to hard boot not including the hand remote no longer works after the updates.
To hell with the Shield Tablet. (Score:2)
I want a new Shield Portable.
Shield TV is a wonderful product (Score:4, Informative)
It is refreshing to see a technology product not forced into obsolescence quickly just to allow the device manufacturer to sell you a marginally improved version 2 of the device.
I got the 2015 Nvidia Shield TV upon release - at the time it was a device that I was told was overpowered and future proof by design, and they were spot on.
Maybe because it was built to be a media hub as well as gaming system (though I really don't play games with mine), but the evolving features and performance over the years have been extremely good.
Firmware updates and partnerships with Amazon has ensured that the system remains supported and stays current with the best of streaming services.
The Nvidia Shield TV has set the bar for quality!
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I was actually also surprised to see updates on the Shield Tablet way after Samsung stopped updating my Galaxy Tab S. Both launched at approx the same time, and the Galaxy Tab S was even more expensive.
Shield products tend to get updates for a crazy amount of time -- too bad it's not in the contract when you buy a new tablet, it would certainly be an important decision point for me.
Not the "best TV" (Score:2)
The best? That's a high bar. TV stations broadcast Full HD over the air, and this is incapable of receiving them. Sure, the TV monitor you connect to may receive them, but then you're using its tuner and app to watch.