NVIDIA’s portable gaming console, the Shield was set to go on sale tomorrow. This is after pre-ordered have been going strong for a few weeks. Now it appears that it’s been delayed. NVIDIA is saying it’s a “mechanical issue” with early units that was spotted during the quality assurance process. The company says they are working the with vendor responsible for the issue and hoping to get it fixed ASAP. In the meantime, they’ve pushed back the launch of the device until July. There’s no specific date yet, just “July”.
If you’re interested, here’s the full statement from NVIDIA:
SHIELD Shipments To Be Delayed Into Next Month
We’re grateful for all the enthusiasm that’s been expressed for SHIELD, our new portable gaming device. And we’re eager to get it into your hands.
But we won’t do that until it’s fully up to the exacting standards that NVIDIA’s known for. And some final quality-assurance testing has just turned up a mechanical issue that we’re not happy with.
So, while we announced last week that SHIELD will go on sale this Thursday, we’ve taken the hard decision to delay shipping until next month.
The issue relates to a third-party mechanical component, and we’re working around the clock with the supplier to get it up to our expectations.
We apologize to those who have preordered SHIELDs and to all those who are waiting for them to go on sale. But we want every SHIELD to be perfect.
Delays are never good for products. Especially one that was announced and shown off nearly 6 months before the launch date. But recently, NVIDIA did drop the price of Shield to just $299. Which is still quite a bit, but man Shield does a lot! And that Tegra 4 inside is definitely powerful along with being the first device with a Tegra 4 inside, next to the HP Slate21 which they announced earlier this week.
How many of you were planning on picking up a Shield this week? Or have you already pre-ordered one?