If there’s one device that represents the Nvidia of times gone by, it’s the Nvidia Shield TV set-top box, a TV streamer that the company has promised to actively keep updated for eternity. If we’re looking for a new symbol to describe how Team Green went from a gaming group to an AI monolith, Nvidia said it no longer plans to sell its core gaming-focused TV streamer and will raise prices on the more expensive model.
After dabbling in different types of controller-based handhelds, Nvidia first introduced us to the original Shield TV in 2015. It continued to update its device and introduced various form factors over the years, but the basic box reigned supreme. Much of the problem probably stems from persistent memory shortages, and even the base Nvidia Shield TV’s only 2GB of RAM with 8GB of storage couldn’t protect it. In a statement provided to Gizmodo, an Nvidia spokesperson provided the following statement:
“The cost of components, including memory, has increased significantly across the industry. We have also stopped producing the standard Shield TV model to focus on producing Shield TV Pro.”
Nvidia loves its Shield. It was designed as a quasi-game console, one that Nvidia wanted to make but never did. It first appeared in 2015, but Nvidia has since continued to support the device with new SoCs and software updates. Although Nvidia has confirmed plans to sell the Shield Pro, this model is currently listed as out of stock. This high-end set-top box now costs $300, which is $100 more than before. The Pro streamer packs 3GB of RAM and 16GB of storage and runs on the Tegra X1+ processor, the same processor in the now-discontinued Shield TV box.
So while you can still buy a shield, it’s not really a good deal. Google’s Streamer TV box now costs $150, $50 more than at launch due to its own memory-driven price hikes. But unlike Google, a company that’s prone to dropping its products at the drop of a hat, Nvidia said it would keep the Shield TV in business. Ars Technica once quoted Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering Andrew Bell about Nvidia’s continued support of Shield. Bell said the company’s CEO, Jensen Huang, once promised he would update Shield “as long as we live.”
Nvidia may continue to provide software updates to its Shield devices. However, Nvidia will inevitably find this support difficult to justify if it doesn’t actually sell anything other than a means for gamers to play GeForce Now, of which there are many. At the same time, Nvidia recently reached a market capitalization close to $4.5 trillion. Economists now value Huang at more than $200 billion. You’d think that if he loved Shield so much, he could personally keep the base and Pro products in stock without even feeling a pinch in his purse strings.
The move is a depressing turn for Nvidia, although not surprising given the current state of its consumer brand. The company’s RTX 50 series GPUs across all major AIC (expansion card) manufacturers now cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars more than at launch. A GeForce RTX 5090, which launched for $2,000 in 2025, now costs well over $7,000, or almost $9,000 from some manufacturers.
This article has been updated to include a statement from Nvidia.
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