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Comment by j45 | Hacker News Reader

Oh, I'm familiar with the valuation.

They were able to build this device and provide a Android TV certified 4K device that didn't need to have planned obsoleteness.

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Yes. And it's ironic that they can do this ten years ago but can't be bothered to make a new one today. I guess the old one still works well enough and people buy it though which the article states.

Feels like a reverse Bell Labs approach. They find their cash cow and only invest in their cash cow rather than research new product areas and fields.

> rather than research new product areas and field

Google “Gsync Pulsar”.

This is just being released now, which probably means its been in the R&D pipeline for the last few years. I would wager this is last gamer feature tech that Nvidia develops for quiter a while.

Its not ironic, its perfect business sense. 10 years ago they gave a shit about gamers and streamers as they were their main market. Now its all about AI server hardware, and they are fighting off international mega clients who all want to secure their chip output for years to come.

Why would Nvidia give 2 hoots about a living room streaming box now?

Because having all your eggs in one basket (GPUs), especially when that basket is artificially huge and likely to crumble, (AI Bubble), is a TERRIBLE idea?

Corporations dont think like that.

They look at market segment 1 (gamers) and see millions, possibly hundreds of millions.

They look at market segment 2 (ai) and they see hundreds of billions, possibly trillions.

Its a public company with shareholders and a board of directors to appease, the decision is an easy one.

Streaming games as well.

They do seem to keep building devices for individual use, if not for home, like their new workstation at home for computers.

Maybe it's working fine enough for their uses?

I think they had done a minor hardware refresh, at the time it came out it was pretty powerful compared to the underpowered alternatives, plus the promise of pure Android TV on it.

I mean the main reason it exists is because. Nvidia spent a bunch of money designing and fabbing the Tegra for automotive use and nobody bought it so the project was desperate to find a customer rather than out of the goodness of their hearts. That's also why they sold it to Nintendo at a bargain basement price for the Switch.

I strongly suspect the reality is that they had to give Nintendo so much money back due to the complete failure of the bootloader security that they still produce the Shield as Jensen still demands they claw their way back to break even.

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