As excited as many of us are for NVIDIA's upcoming Android TV-powered SHIELD set-top box, there has been a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the rather measly 16GB storage option. We all know that modern games - even ones designed for mobile platforms - can easily clock in at two or three gigs apiece, filling that 16GB drive with just a few titles. Sure, there is expandable storage, but it's just so convenient to have everything all in one place and not have to worry about SD cards, USB drives, and the like.

Looks like NVIDIA heard the cries of users, because it has quietly updated its SHIELD Console site with a new option: 500GB for $299. That's just $100 more than the 16GB model, and it offers more than 31 times the storage. The only thing that's unclear is what kind of drive it'll be - possibly a hybrid drive with a 32GB SSD partition? Or will it be a 500 HDD? There's even a possibility it'll be the standard 16GB model with an external 500GB drive. At this point, you know as much as we do, so all we can do is speculate.

We've reached out to NVIDIA for clarification and will update once we hear something back. Either way, this little box just got a bit more interesting.

UPDATE: 2015/04/23 5:26pm PDT BY

It looks like someone at NVIDIA made an error. We've received the following statement from a company representative:

A SHIELD partner development kit was erroneously listed on our website today as a product. For clarification, NVIDIA has not launched a 500 GB SKU for SHIELD. The website is being updated with our announced SHIELD product, available soon at $199.99.

So it looks like this was an option offered to a few partner developers (the kind that make exclusive games for SHIELD hardware, probably) and won't be available for the general public. But take heart: the fact that NVIDIA built a larger-capacity model at all, not to mention the instant and mostly positive response from this little screw-up, means they might consider a SHIELD console with more storage space in the future.

Source: NVIDIA

Thanks: Josh