The Nvidia SHIELD is definitely a cool device, but it fell short in most peoples eyes because of the lack of support for the awesome gamestream service, along with the high price tag that really seemed to only reach out to a smaller niche group of hardcore gamers with the cash to burn on a such a device. Most didn’t see the need to spend $299 when they could spend an extra $100 and get a next-gen console, or spend the same amount and get the old consoles with games and extra controllers. There are a also a slew of other Android powered consoles out there as options that also come with a much cheaper price. They don’t do quite the same thing as the SHIELD, but they certainly cost a lot less. Thanks to the great folks over at ASUS, it seems we might have a decent alternative to the SHIELD in the works, giving us a viable(and hopefully cheaper) option than the Nvidia Shield. ASUS is apparently calling this device the “Gamebox”, at least in house as it could just be a codename, and it has shown up on the Antutu benchmarks.
The device as listed with the screenshot below, apparently comes with a 1280×720 display, and houses a Tegra 4 chip inside with the Nvidia GeForce ULP. It also lists 2GB of RAM, which would put it on par with many other current Android devices out there. It looks to have about 8GB of storage space which should be enough to get some games on there, although once you start downloading and installing the more impressive games 8GB might run out quick as those types of games usually take up much more space. Speaking from experience with the first Nexus 7 tablet, 8GB goes fast and it’s simply not enough. Although the storage space is low, we would expect some sort of solution in the way of additional storage through the cloud or with an added microSD card slot. According to the benchmark listings, both the Nvidia SHIELD and the ASUS Gamebox seem to perform pretty close to each other, so if the stats from this benchmark pan out to be the final version of ASUS device, then a cheaper price might be all that it needs to really compete with Nvidia’s handheld. If this actually makes it to market, and is considerably less than the Nvidia SHIELD, would you pick one up for your mobile gaming needs as it would be a dedicated Android gaming device? Or would you stick to Android gaming on your phone and tablet?