Update: The NVIDIA Shield TV sans gamepad is now available for just $179

Update (10/19/17): The time has come and you can pick up your NVIDIA Shield TV bundle for just $179. Even though you won’t be getting the gamepad with this bundle, you still will be able to play some games with just the remote. In fact, there are a number of games you’ll still be able to play, they include the following:

• Jackbox Party Pack 3
• Jackbox Party Pack 2
• Jackbox Party Pack
• Alto’s Adventure
• Riptide GP: Renegade
• Real Racing 3
• Crossy Road
• Mousebot: Escape from CatLab
• Red Ball 4
• PAC-MAN 256 – Endless Maze
• Skeletomb
• Afterloop
• Table Top Racing
• AirAttack 2
• Epic Heroes War
• PAC-MAN
• Beach Buggy Racing
• Riptide GP 2
• Power Hover

NVIDIA has also announced that on Thursday, October 19, Jackbox Party Pack 4 will hit the Play Store. It’ll run $24.99 and come with five and a half “crowd-slaying” games.

Original article (9/21/17): The 16 GB NVIDIA Shield TV now starts at just $179. The new Shield TV bundle, which simply arrives with the streaming box and a remote, joins the $199 game controller bundle and the larger 500 GB Shield Pro option for $299.

NVIDIA announced the new bundle earlier today, stating that pre-orders for the unit would begin shipping on October 18. The acclaimed streaming box provides access to TV shows, films and music purchased on Google Play, as well as providing up to 4K HDR streaming from services like Netflix, Amazon Video and Hulu. Spotify and Pandora support is also included.

It’s one of the most comprehensive media streaming machines available and has been through several upgrades this year alone, delivering features like 4K, 60 FPS YouTube video casting support, and the ability to record DVR shows to NAS; it even includes voice search support. Check out the (possibly unnecessarily large) comparison graph below to see how it stacks up against the competition.

Of course, to make use of the games you’ll need to pick up NVIDIA’s gamepad separately, which costs $59.99 (or you could just shell out for the $199 bundle mentioned above). Still, it’s nice to see another purchase option for this — especially given how great a piece of kit it is. Read all our thoughts on it in our NVIDIA Shield TV review at the link.

Head over to Nvidia.com if you want to take a look at the new bundle.