Nvidia announces Android handheld Project Shield

Everyone's getting into the Linux game, it seems, and now Nvidia has tossed its hat into the ring. The graphics card manufacturer yesterday announced its Project Shield, an Android-powered handheld that resembles an Xbox 360 controller with a flip-up touchscreen. Curiously, as well as playing Android games, it can play PC games streamed over WiFi from your gaming rig.

Powered by Nvidia's shiny new Tegra 4 processor, the clamshell handheld packs a 5-inch, 720p, 294 dpi screen with multi-touch. Control-wise, it's also got two thumbsticks, a d-pad, four face buttons, triggers, and bumper buttons. It can also hook up to a television.

The ability to easily stream PC games onto the handheld (or a screen) is an interesting one, which might make Project Shield slightly more than just another doomed piece of show-off tech. It's a similar idea to OnLive or Gaikai but since it's intended for local use, the latency should be far more reasonable than either of those cloud services. You'll need a reasonably speedy PC for streaming, obviously, with an Nvidia Kepler GPU and at least 4GB of RAM.

Nvidia hasn't said when it plans to release Project Shield or how much it'll cost. Hit the Project Shield site for more information.

Clamshell: engaged