Nvidia claims Shield sales are 'great,' planning to 'ramp production'

Shield, Nvidia's Android-based portable gaming console, has been a success. Well, according to Nvidia, at least.

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Shield, Nvidia's Android-based portable gaming console, has been a success. Well, according to Nvidia, at least.

Senior director of investor relations Chris Evenden says that "sales have been great," noting that "everything that we shipped so far has sold out." (Although, that's not what the device's official website suggests, which limits purchases of 4 units at a time.)

According to GI.biz, Evenden says the company is "starting to ramp production." International sales will be key, as CEO Jen-Hsun Huang expects a "strong" second half of the year due to "Shield moving beyond the US."

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    August 9, 2013 7:00 AM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Nvidia claims Shield sales are 'great,' planning to 'ramp production'.

    Shield, Nvidia's Android-based portable gaming console, has been a success. Well, according to Nvidia, at least.

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      August 9, 2013 7:08 AM

      It's out?

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        August 9, 2013 7:21 AM

        lol pretty much my first thoughts

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      August 9, 2013 7:25 AM

      slight hijack, but do you guys and gals think stuff like CUDA and Physx will go away being that they are nvidia proprietary? AMD's stance on it is that it is doomed in the long-run because you can't have proprietary tech in today's market. This seems correct because there are still only just a few games that support it.

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        August 9, 2013 7:51 AM

        If Nvidia was the GPU technology of choice in the new consoles, I would expect proprietary stuff to stay around. Instead, they will have to make their tech work in a similar fashion (from a software side) as AMDs to ease developer work load. If AMD cards play every console port better and with less effort than Nvidia ones, well fuck.

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        August 9, 2013 8:41 AM

        I think Nvidia is insane to not allow it to work on AMD, and it can work on their GPUs 100%.

        The thing is gamers and games suffer for not having this tech in every game, we all know there is a Physx path to CPUs AMD , Intel, PS3, Xbox 360 and others. I think it is time for Nvidia to open their tech up to AMD I don't see the point any more to keep it just for their GPU there are far to little games that use it, total freaking waste.

        It feels like such a MASSIVE waste of EPIC tech because they don't want their competitor to use it basically no one uses it :(

        And this is coming from a massive fan of the tech, I have always had a independent card just for the tech.

        I can only think what a massive diff it be(and progression) if all games had GPU physx and not CPU, for every game it be INSANE!

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          August 9, 2013 8:56 AM

          You know that physX is in a pretty large chunk of AAA shipping titles in some form or fashion, right?

          CUDA is still important for the workstation market, even if it's less commonly used in games.

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            August 9, 2013 9:10 AM

            I think the point is that PhysX is headed for obscurity once the new consoles take over unless Nvidia changes its policy or AMD pays them whatever royalties they're likely waiting for.

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              August 9, 2013 9:21 AM

              Why would the new consoles change anything? PhysX ships in games on the current consoles.

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                August 9, 2013 9:24 AM

                Because they all use AMD GPUs. Is just desktop non-Nvidia GPUs that aren't supported? That would be dumb. Or is this all misconception? I honestly haven't followed this stuff much in the last year or two.

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                  August 9, 2013 9:41 AM

                  PhysX works on Xbox 360, which is also an AMD GPU. There are well optimized CPU paths for consoles. I don't see why this would change.

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                    August 9, 2013 9:57 AM

                    Physx on a Xbox 360 does not use the GPU Physx path it is using a CPU physx path, that is what we are saying needs to change.

                    CPU phys < GPU physx hard core

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                      August 9, 2013 10:03 AM

                      The new consoles are equivalent to a mid-to-high end desktop right now.

                      By comparison, a PS4 (the faster of the two) is probably about 11x slower than your specific rig. That's today. Who knows what CPU/GPU you'll have in your system by the time the PS4 is actually on stores.

                      For the entire next console generation, there will be headroom on the PC that doesn't exist on the console. Things like PhysX are a great place for developers to leverage that headroom, because they add "wow" without impacting game play or affecting multiplayer.

                      What consoles need is code that is highly, highly tuned. Maybe that means a GPU implementation for PhysX that uses DirectCompute or OpenCL, but I find that pretty unlikely. I'm thinking that with tessellation and 4K displays, the next consoles will already have plenty of work to bog down a GPU (and to tune the amount of work dynamically).

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                        August 9, 2013 10:23 AM

                        I know you have a point, since I have been making my game and engine I have seen how on my target rez 4096x1080 the GPU is what I am shit kicking most just with my render stuff, so I see what your saying. I have a 4k screen and it is quiet aggressive on my game at that rez for sure. Right now my CPU cores are at 20% @ max load(spread across all the cores), I could use the extra juice for physx like you said it is true.

                        It is just hard to still to agree 100% for all the INSANE physx games I love, Sacred 2, DarkVoid, Mafia2, BL2, Alice Madness Returns,Batman, Mirrors Edge, Metero, Cryostasis that really look rad are all GPU accelerated. I guess your point is the CPU is getting more cores and these effects will be doable now on the CPU.

                        You guys have always said GPU > CPU, but it is really interesting with both BL2 and Alice Madness Returns the effects are almost identical so when I get my 16 core Intel chip later on this year I will have a lot more juice that is for sure.

                        I guess really all we can blame is the devs that don't use CPU Physx like Boarder Lands 2 that is a perfect example of CPU physx on a none Nvidia GPU accelerated case.

                        Still why don't you guys have a AMD GPU path, what would it really hurt if you guys did that? Not being a dink I really wonder what the reasoning is?



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                          August 9, 2013 10:38 AM

                          I'm saying that the GPU will be busy enough on consoles (the GPU is already aged, today), so it's unlikely they'll have cycles to spare to do GPU physx.

                          But also, fundamentally, why would we do additional work that strictly benefits our competitors and their customers?

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                            August 9, 2013 10:46 AM

                            I see that makes sense from the console stand point they don't have extra GPU juice lying around..

                            Well like I said there are so little GPU accelerated games do you really think gamers buy Nvidia cards for the GPU accelerated Physx games? I am saying that number is so low the amount of GPU physx games there is no point to have it exclusive it only hurts the gamers and the games.

                            Do you really think if you guys open Physx to AMDs GPUs that people would buy more AMD cards? No way like I sad for a hand full of Physx GPU games not a chance. I don't see that point at all.

                            I think Physx and GPU Physx owns hard core but the reason I always get a Nvidia card aka Geforce is because it is a faster card and amazing driver support not for the handful of Physx GPU games.

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                              August 9, 2013 11:18 AM

                              I'm not sure how many more games you'd expect it to be in. It's in many AAA titles that launch. It's relatively new overall, but the number of titles that have the functionality is increasing over time. For example, there were 8 titles for all of last year (5 the year before), and there are 7 so far this year already. And we're not even to the busy season yet.

                              Most "hardcore" gamers buy between 5 and 12 games a year.

                              I really think PhysX drives some purchasing decisions. If no one at nvidia did, it would be unlikely that we would spend the resources on it that we do (it's not a small team).

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                                August 9, 2013 11:41 AM

                                "8 titles for all of last year (5 the year before), and there are 7 so far this year already."

                                GPU accelerated physx? What are the names of these games?

                                I can only think of 2 this year: GPU accelerated

                                Warframe - 2013
                                Metro: Last Light - 2013
                                ---
                                PlanetSide 2 - 2012
                                Hawken - 2012
                                Borderlands 2 - 2012
                                ---
                                Batman: Arkham City - 2011

                                There where so many rad games last year that is a very small percentage of only 2 games that support GPU Physx.

                                No one is disputing CPU Physx(it is in hundreds of games) I am talking about GPU accelerated Physx on the PC.

                                Anyways this feels like a console war I am not going argue anymore, your a cool dude I don't want any bad blood.

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                                  August 9, 2013 12:05 PM

                                  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_hardware-accelerated_PhysX_support

                                  Sort by date, there are 6 so far. The last one hasn't been released yet (but has been announced). There are almost certainly other, unannounced titles.

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                                    August 9, 2013 1:13 PM

                                    Cool thanks for the list, I just found out about -> EverQuest Next and The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

                                    I go here quiet a bit : http://physxinfo.com/news/

                                    To bad ever game did not have the tech(that be my wish) and it was a standard, I guess that makes me greedy I should be happy with what there is.

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                                      August 9, 2013 4:08 PM

                                      It takes a non-trivial amount of work to get physx into a game, so I think (for at least the foreseeable future) it'd be unlikely that PhysX--even if it were a standard--would show up in every game.

                                      Like Indie games for example? What would they even use PhysX for?

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                August 9, 2013 9:30 AM

                The new ones are AMD GPU/APUs

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            August 9, 2013 9:49 AM

            Yes, but it is CPU only and not GPU accelerated, that awesome tech just sits there wasted :( I wish every single freaking game had GPU accelerated Physx, daVinci1980 it makes me so sad bro :(

            Put it this way excluding CPU accelerated Physx, since Physx launch how many games use GPU accelerated physx? How many games in total?

            The list is so small I don't see the point why Nvidia bothers not to open GPU physx to AMD GPUs if no one uses it or just a few it is pointless and a waste.

            Again I am not talking about CPU physx which I know there are hundreds which probably no one is aware of since it is nothing like GPU physx stuff which you can really see.

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        August 9, 2013 10:50 AM

        Physx will stick around, unless Unity and Unreal drop it. Not too many projects use the GPU features anyway, and it'll be on next gen consoles, where the bread and butter is.

        CUDA isn't really aimed at games, but instead they target finance and science applications, where cross platform compatibility doesn't really matter. In fact, their strategy seems to have been to make their platform so much better (stability, driver quality, debugging tools, etc) than OpenCL and Direct Compute that it encourages vendor lock-in, which makes them a lot of money through high end hardware sales, at least in the niche markets that they're aiming for. So, unless AMD or Intel really try to shake that market up, I don't really see CUDA going away soon.

        From a coder's standpoint, I'd like to see OpenCL get some real support from the major vendors, since its the only cross OS and cross hardware API, but that's not necessarily in nVidia's or Microsoft's best interest so I dunno if it's gonna happen.

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        August 9, 2013 2:08 PM

        CUDA will more than likely stick around for the hyper-optimizers using GPU computation, but most GPU computation will be shifting to OpenCL/DirectCompute. For that battle, I think OpenCL will win, since the OpenGL ES 3.0 spec mandates OpenCL 1.0 compatibility.

        PhysX go away? Nah. As long as they make something work on AMD, they can keep the "competitive advantage" from their library.

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      August 9, 2013 7:42 AM

      I already sent mine back, wasn't impressed. The PC streaming was so hit and miss (yah, it's in beta, but what I experienced was alpha level) and the Terga optimized games were just mediocre at best... great premise, but it it totally fell flat for me... it's also way too heavy for a handheld

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        August 9, 2013 3:53 PM

        But Randy Pitchford thought it was really, REALLY cool. He has 10 of them in his house right now!

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      August 9, 2013 7:46 AM

      [deleted]

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        August 9, 2013 7:56 AM

        It's ONLY $299 AND you get a free t-shirt! Yeah, I see you pulling out your credit card...

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        August 9, 2013 7:59 AM

        They are selling well relative to Nvidia's supply, which they said is in the thousands. So the expectation bar is low

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        August 9, 2013 8:11 AM

        I'm an interested consumer and in the target demo, etc. But, without killer apps specifically designed for this thing, I just can't justify it. Not even as a silly idea for b-day gift. I've said in other posts, but the Tegra optimized stuff they're toting just isn't enough. Most of it is T3 optimized, and the games themselves aren't stellar. And, no, Sonic just doesn't cut it. Maybe like some kind of NOVA T4 optimized version or such. Maybe.

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        August 9, 2013 8:57 AM

        Interesting, you're basically the only person I've heard give it a negative review so far. I'm sorry it didn't work out for you and your girly hands.

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      August 9, 2013 8:41 AM

      Yeah, it's totally lighting the world on fire, just the other, we all got ours mixed up in the office, so we had to start putting stickers on them to figure out who owns which.

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      August 9, 2013 8:54 AM

      they sold out of their stock of 5?

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      August 9, 2013 10:10 AM

      So this means they sold both of them?

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      August 9, 2013 10:21 AM

      I imagine their projections were so low that anything is great?

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      August 9, 2013 10:41 AM

      soon to be on clearance at target/bestbuy

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      August 9, 2013 11:31 AM

      It's totally ugly too. Looks like an orignal xbox controller.

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        August 9, 2013 8:07 PM

        I liken it to some kind of 90's creative labs product "Hand Game Blaster 3D" or some shit.

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          August 9, 2013 9:27 PM

          I'm going to just refer to then as "Hand Blaster 3D", now.

          ...better come with some cleaning clothes, hey-o!

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      August 9, 2013 11:31 AM

      They don't specify which way they're planning to ramp production.

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      August 9, 2013 11:58 AM

      Those with low expectations are not to be disappointed.

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      August 9, 2013 2:05 PM

      [deleted]

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        August 9, 2013 4:10 PM

        Test the open-source stuff source. Hack the hell out of it and report back.

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      August 9, 2013 5:44 PM

      [deleted]

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