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I'm not going to read all that!

I will be short and sweet. Whether there is a large market for the Shield at the price point (even if it is weird), well........we'll just have to disagree. And it really doesn't matter as it is what it is, as is the price.

I do think you're way low on your estimation of what the remote will be. The Fire TV remote is $30, and it isn't rechargeable, nor does it have a touch capabilities. So you are looking at it being probably at least $30, and if I had to take a guess, it will probably be closer to the $40 range. So even if it were bundled with a remote rather than the controller you are still not looking a that big of a difference in savings.

Your argument would also have more validity if you actually need the remote. But since the Shield comes with a IR receiver built in and you can use it with a Harmony IR remote out of the box (which many people already have) it's unnecessary. As well, you can probably just pick up a Fire TV Stick remote for $15 or some other cheap BT remote that will work. The only reason to have the Shield remote is if you want a "matching set".

You also have to keep in mind that Nvidia is leveraging the Shield against their new Grid services. So having a controller bundled with it makes more sense.

Hah, fair enough ... but you are still speaking to techies. Many people just want to take it out of the box and have it work. The fact that it has an IR receiver is great for us, but probably doesn't mean much to the average user ... who doesn't have a harmony, and isn't going to want to buy a separate/different remote and figure out how to sync it up.

I guess I just think they are going to miss out on a major market segment, the simple streamers (who I'd argue is the largest market segment), in its current form.

I guess it doesn't matter to our group. With an X1, 4k, hdmi 2.0, x265, hevc ... even if the device fails miserably in general to gain a large user-base, it'll be powerful enough for us for years to come.