NVIDIA is proving that its Shield handheld gaming console, is very important to the company, by dropping its price. When NVIDIA announced the price back in the May, the $349 tag was quite a lot for many to swallow, especially when the Nintendo 3DS and the PlayStation Vita only cost $199 and $299 respectively.

NVIDIA made the announcement on Thursday in a blog post on its website, stating that it has listened to gamers plea and has dropped the price to $299. The price drop reflects NVIDIA's seriousness about makin Shield a worthy rival of existing handheld gaming consoles and it hopes to garner the attention of gamers as the June 27 release date approaches.

"We've heard from thousands of gamers that if the price was $299, we'd have a home run. So we're changing the price of Shield to $299," Nvidia said.

Those who have pre-ordered the shield before the price drop will only pay $299 when the device ships, so need to backtrack on your pre-order as everything will work as intended.

The Shield is NVIDIA's first gaming console, and if you weren't aware, the device is based on Android. The device specs include a 5-inch 720p display, Tegra 4 chipset, two analog stick, D-pad, MicroSD card slot, HDMI, and Wi-Fi. There's no 3G here, but from the looks of the device, it doesn't seem to need 3G as it doesn't appear as if many users would carry the Shield outside of their homes due to the size. In addition, users should get anywhere between 5-10 hours of battery life, which all depends on what is done with the Shield.

At $349, the NVIDIA Shield would have been a hard sell since all of its games in the Tegra Zone would be available on smartphones with Tegra 4 inside. Furthermore, it was more expensive compared to the Nintendo 3DS and the PlayStation Vita.

In a nutshell, there is one thing the Shield is good for, and that is playing PC games remotely. However, users would be required to have a NVIDIA GTX 650 card or higher, so already a gamer is looking at upwards of $600 in combined spending if he/she wants to put the Shield through its paces.