That's basically what it is. The streaming is pretty much second to none and designed to work exclusively with Steam.
People are welcome to second guess and deride this all they want. I can play Fallout: New Vegas from my bed on a portable console and that's all I've ever wanted.
Mine should be here on Friday. I am without a desktop for the summer, but I'll be playing emulators on it until then. Glad to hear the streaming works well!
While the number of games in the Google Play store with controller support isn't extensive, the ones that work, do so very well. I'm playing GTA 3 on it right now and it runs beautifully. Emulators run very well and are key for me as well but don't discount native Android titles either.
You can stream Steam games from the PC on the Shield (AFAIK).
What, through VNC? That doesn't seem like it would be a very enjoyable experience.
Shield's PC game streaming works by using the hardware H.264 encoder in Nvidia GTX 650 (or higher) graphics cards. They recommend a reasonably fast PC and a fast wireless network.
Does it support an ATI card in the PC?
No, you need an Nvidia card above a GTX 650 because those cards have the built in H.264 encoder necessary to stream the games.
no. it's nvidia only.
I wish they would sell the streaming part without the screen. The price is prohibitive and the standalone games seem lame, but I have a nice HDTV in the living room and an ATI GPU that could be replaced.