NVIDIA’s bread and butter is gaming graphics cards with some minuscule amount of revenue coming from other hardware sales. In order to diversify, NVIDIA decided to release its own streaming game service called GRID which has proven mildly successful but now the company may be taking things a step further by releasing a dedicated GRID streaming device.
Nvidia has a streaming game service called GRID, which it debuted last year via its Shield dedicated Android gaming devices. The maker of PC and mobile gaming graphics hardware is dabbling in becoming more of a service provider with GRID, especially since it actually has the potential to cannibalize the sale of powerful graphics cards for local gaming rigs. Nvidia is set to make a big announcement that has been “five years” in the making during GDC this year, and we recently theorized on the weekly Droidcast that it could be a dedicated GRID streaming device, like a lightweight, inexpensive set-top box designed specifically to bring game streaming affordably to the living room. Here’s why, despite cannibalization, that might be long-term sense for Nvidia.