Although Nvidia Corp. reduced price of its Shield portable video game console, bundled it with popular GeForce GTX graphics cards and free games, it has not managed to make it any popular among gamers. While the company does not want to share the exact number of units sold so far, it admits that it is low. On the other hand, Nvidia claims that Shied is needed to boost the Google Android games in general.

“We are modest about the revenues from [Nvidia Shield], we are modest about its distribution, because it is something that we are still learning, but it is important to our strategy for gaming,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia, during a conference call with investors and financial analysts.

For Nvidia, it is important to evolve Google Android as a platform for video games. Once Nvidia convinces multiple game developers to create graphics-intensive applications for Android and gamers will like those titles, the demand for Tegra application processors with high-performance GeForce graphics will increase. Unfortunately for the company, at present there are about ten games that take advantage of Tegra and it does not seem that those titles are popular. Nonetheless, the company does not give up.

Even though Nvidia Shield is in general impressive, it has numerous restrictions: far not all Google Android games support D-pad and analogue sticks, not all PC games can be streamed to Shield (and not all TVs support Shield too), its display is smaller than that of tablets and phablets. Moreover, the Shield costs $249 in the U.S. and £269 in the UK, more than PlayStation Vita. Finally, the console is not officially available in continental Europe.