The Verge recently did an interview with Raj Talluri, the senior vice president of product management, at DICE 2013. The hot topic was NVIDIA Project SHIELD, something many people are saying will revolutionize mobile gaming. His response? There is no need for it.

In a bold statement, he said, “I don’t need to make a box. I just need Moga to make a controller. I can’t see too much difference between that and the Project Shield. It seems to do everything the Tegra 4 one does!” And in a big way, he’s very right.

The current mentality of smartphones is to have one device for everything, be it for email, for taking photos, or even for gaming. Why buy a separate peripheral like SHIELD when your phone can do the same thing with a MOGA controller for a fraction of the price? As long as processors are powerful enough to handle games, there is no need for a smartphone and a portable game console running a mobile OS. And it seems that Qualcomm would rather build chips for smartphones capable of gaming than build gaming machines.

However, this is not me dissing SHIELD. I still love the idea and implementation, though I’m not sure how necessary it is. As a future MOGA Pro customer, I doubt I’d be buying a SHIELD, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t have a market. But what do you guys think? Do you agree with Talluri, or are you waiting to buy a Project SHIELD? Tell us in the comments!

The Verge