As the holidays come nearer, the Xbox One and the PS4 have been rolling out updates and more details, with the Xbox One going so far as to have Xbox Community Manager Major Nelson unbox the console in a video.

But there are also two devices that aim to compete--at least at a certain level--with the two big names in the gaming industry, and they are somehow doing so in a number of ways.

Nvidia Shield: Making waves for handheld gaming

For starters, Nvidia Shield has surprisingly made a great impression and is now gearing up for better sales after its release this month.

"Sales have been great. Everything that we shipped so far has sold out--but we're just starting to ramp production," said Chris Evenden, senior director of investor relations, to Games Industry.

In fact, even with a slight decline in profits in Q2, the company is anything but pessimistic of the growth of the device, with plans of ramping up production and even creating new Tegra 4 devices.

What's more, Nvidia has also been quick on making improvements, this time rolling out the SHIELD Software Update 51.

According to Android Community, the update, which is pretty big at 402MB, is bent on fixing audio issues, specifically reducing the audio latency for GeForce PC streaming.

If you are still unconvinced and need a little more pushing to get the Nvidia Shield, experience the device for yourself at the Eurogamer Expo 2013. Eurogamer reports that you can have a hands-on play of the Nvidia Shield from September 26 to 29 a Earls Court London, which is great for those in the Europe territory, as the device is still only available in the U.S.

MMOs and more game on Ouya

When it first made news for breaking the Kickstarter record to earn $8.5 million in pledges, it seemed that Ouya had a lot of promise as an underdog Android-based console.

Not only do you have a unique design that's unbelievably small when you put it up against the giants of PS3 and Xbox 360, the next-gens PS4 and Xbox One, and the other upcoming consoles like the MOJO, it puts compact console gaming to a new level.

However, what appears to be great on paper (and inspirational after what they did at Kickstarter) may not be as great when you start implementing it in the market, especially not when the numbers are not as impressive as its previous success was.

Uproxx reports that most of the owners of Ouya consoles are only testing the games for free instead of upgrading to the paid version. Whether this is due to the game not being great enough to merit paying for it or because the option of try-for-free-before-you-buy is available is not yet clear.

But the report adds that Ouya will now go back to Kickstarter in order to find good games, giving so much as $1 million in order to fund the games and convince independent developers to create Ouya exclusives to separate itself from the Android selections.

So far, MMOs that have been tested on the Ouya, with Massively having a look at two MMO games, Vendetta Online and Order and Chaos. From the review, it seems like Vendetta Online seems too much of a hassle to play, though this may not be caused by Ouya as a console.

On the other hand, Order and Chaos was a pretty decent play, though the controls were still something of a work to maneuver.

Still, the hope for Ouya to actually create and play decent games is not something to be questioned--but as a fresh console that has been experiencing pretty serious lags, the next step would be to show those that previously supported them as well as game developers that the revolution that it was previously talking about is bound to happen.

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