Along with having announced that its new Shield console would soon support Google Assistant and 4K HDR content, Nvidia has announced another new product called the Nvidia Spot.

The Spot is essentially a small, round mic and speaker unit that connects to the Shield via Wi-Fi. It can detect your voice from up to 20 feet away and plugs directly in to the power outlet, so no messy chords everywhere.

This small object acts as an audio portal to your Shield box from anywhere in the house, enabling you to dish out voice commands to your Shield from any room in the house that has a Spot plugged in. 

It's similar, in some ways, to the way the Echo Dot works with the bigger Amazon Echo, although it's completely incapable of working independently. It's just a wireless mic that connects to the brains of the Shield TV box. The Shield does all the brain-work. 

Once the update adds Google Assistant and Smartthings support to the Shield, you'll be able to use the Spot to interact with your smart home products. 

Of course, Nvidia's vision is that you have a handful of these dotted around your house, making the Shield the real digital hub of your connected home.

Whether you want to play a game of "I'm feeling lucky" with Google Assistant, shut your garage door, turn up your heating or dim your lights, the Spot can take your command and the Shield will make it happen. 

It's not available to order, or pre-order, just yet, but when it is, one of them will set you back $49 in the US (that's roughly £40). Sadly, we don't know when it's going on sale, but our guess is that Nvidia will wait to deliver the relevant features to the Shield console before offering the Spot for sale.