Sounds good IF they can get streaming gaming companies like On-Live onboard with this. The biggest problem I have with gaming today is that your games are pretty much 'locked' to one OS, if you switch in the future to OSX or Linux, you are SoL 98% of the time with getting your games to work on those other OS'
SHIELD (the original and this new Tablet version) facilitates a ton of functionality.
PC Streaming - If you have a PC with Steam and/or Origin, the SHIELD device through the Nvidia Experience software allows your PC to render the game, control the game from the device and streams the video to the device's screen. You can stream over your home network or you can stream it over the internet to your device as long as you have access to a wifi connection. So you can stream Skyrim to the SHIELD while you're laying in your bed, or Stream Borderlands 2 while you're on break at work.
-GRID aka Nvidia's version of On-Live. They render the game of your choice at a server farm and stream the PC game to your SHIELD. This gives you PC-streaming capabilities even if you don't own a gaming PC. It's in Beta atm however (but it works pretty good).
-Console Mode. You can set up the device to connect to your TV or computer monitor and play android games on a big screen and either control it with the device itself, or use a bluetooth wireless controller to control the game.
Emulation - you can play classic games from systems like NES, SNES, Genesis, PS, etc. A Link to the Past + SHIELD = good times.
Full Android - can install and run any android app you want on it, of course.
This thing is well worth the price imho. $299 is chump change in comparison for what you get for it.