Days After Launching, Nvidia’s Shield TV Is Already More Expensive

The global pandemic has sent the Australian dollar into the toilet, and it hasn’t taken long before companies were forced to adjust. Take Nvidia. The company finally launched the latest version of their Shield TV streaming box in Australia last week, and literally days after it went on sale, the price has already soared.

The base Shield TV went on sale last week for $249.95, around the same price as the original Shield TV, with a new Shield TV Pro retailing for $349.95. The main distinctions between the two were an improvement in specs, support for better games on the Pro and Plex media support, not to mention more USB ports and storage.

[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/03/nvidias-new-shield-finally-launches-in-australia/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/03/nvidia-shield-2020-1.jpg” title=”Nvidia’s New SHIELD TV Finally Launches In Australia” excerpt=”Could there be a better time to launch a new streaming device? Probably not. Nvidia’s refreshed SHIELD streaming box launched internationally last year, and as of right now you can finally grab it in Australia. The main takeaways is added support for Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision, an AI processor to better handle upscaling of content to 4K, the new Tegra X1+ chip, and a new remote that has a six month battery life.”]

But it’s been not been a great time for the Aussie dollar. The AUD has fallen by almost 10 cents against the USD in the last fortnight alone. That stark drop has forced resellers to adjust pricing accordingly, which has pushed the price of both devices up by $40 or $50.

“Based on current rates, most resellers are now selling SHIELD TV for $289.95 and SHIELD TV Pro for $399.95. This pricing may continue to change according to market conditions,” a spokesperson for Nvidia advised in an email. And some resellers have gone even further than that, with the new Shield TV selling for $299 at major retailers like PC Case Gear and Kogan.

It’s the start of what is likely to be a lot of price spikes. The cost of things like webcams have soared in some instances; a basic Logitech HD Pro C920 webcam is being sold for $US300 by some resellers at the time of writing, having gone for under $US100 only weeks prior. Supply issues are bad enough. But combined with the tanking dollar, prices have nowhere to go but up – and that’s not likely to change for a while.


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