If a Nexus 7 sells for $200, a Nexus 4 sells for $300 and a Nexus 10 sells for $400, why would this ever sell for $450 or more?
Unless nVidia has delusions of grandeur and Jen Hsun Huang woke up thinking he's Tim Cook, there's no way this is going to cost more than $350, and I'm rooting for sub-$300.
Just out of curiousity I went looking at those various devices.
Nexus 7
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Tegra 3 - so a cheaper slower chip.
1 GB of RAM.
much lower PPI screen.
small battery.
Likely being subsidized (sold at or below cost).
Nexus 4 [edit - fixed, had specs for Nexus S 4G previously)
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Quad core Krait - so much slower.
high PPI screen
2GB of RAM.
Tiny battery.
Nothing there other than the screen and memory amount are really comparable to the nVidia Shield.
Nexus 10
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Exynos 5250 - finally getting to similar performance ballpark at least.
2 GB of RAM, so matches up better.
Decent battery size, probably similar to what will go into the NV console.
High PPI screen.
This is the closest in cost you'll probably find as long as we ignore the rest. The hardware also has to fit into a potentially smaller but bulkier form factor. Whether that will end up helping with the cost is hard to say. So at this point it is quite likely that the minimum price is going to be around 450-750+ USD (cheapest Nexus 10 in the US is 489 USD that I've seen from a casual search).
All of the above have
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No hardware controllers.
No pivoting screen.
No hardware buttons.
No support for 4k (beefier HDMI solution, implies a significantly stronger GPU, etc.)
Any of the additional hardware and tech that Nvidia has hinted at but not disclosed as of yet.
There is also a good chance that any "Google" branded devices are getting a bit of subsidy from Google as they can then recoup those through app store sales, something nVidia is unlikely to be able to do.
They are also unlikely to sell this anywhere near cost. Unless pressed into a corner (ala Radeon 4870 price war) they always build hefty and healthy margins into their products.
So, thank you. After your post and looking at the state of Android devices, I think it's pretty safe to say that it'll likely be somewhere between 450-800 USD or more. And I'd be hugely surprised if it came in closer to 450 than 800.
Regards,
SB