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 which 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.

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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

From The Chatty
  • reply
    January 7, 2013 6:00 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, 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 which 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.

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      January 7, 2013 6:32 AM

      Well at least Sony won't have to worry about the Vita being the lowest selling handheld gaming device currently.

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      January 7, 2013 6:59 AM

      "it can play PC games streamed over WiFi from your gaming rig."
      Why would you ever do that. If you're at home, have a capable gaming PC, and want to play PC games... isn't there a much more obvious solution than this? Is there really a significant segment of PC gamers who often think to themselves, "Man, this would be so much better on a 5 inch screen!"

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        January 7, 2013 7:11 AM

        If I can do my WoW dailes while on the shitter, I'll buy one.

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        January 7, 2013 7:17 AM

        what's better than playing shitty games while taking a shit?





        playing good games (anti joke chicken)

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        January 7, 2013 7:20 AM

        you must own a squat toilet

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        January 7, 2013 7:23 AM

        Yeah that one's a head scratcher.

        I can see a benefit to a streaming box that can take things from your PC and put them on your television, but a tiny screen?

        Also I like how the article says this project might not be doomed then compares it to OnLive.

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        January 7, 2013 7:33 AM

        You would be able to play Dark Souls on the shitter. Just sayin.

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        January 7, 2013 8:14 AM

        Am I the only one who likes the thought of being able to sit next to my wife on the couch and play Xcom, while she watches TV? As opposed to having to sequester myself in a different room.

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          January 7, 2013 8:16 AM

          Waiting for some one to hack the Wii U gamepad to do that :)

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          January 7, 2013 9:06 AM

          negative. just being in the room will encourage her to say things out loud in the hope to draw you out of your game into her tv watching so she can comment about what's going on. wearing headphone would only make it worse too.

          no. stay in the man cave where you're not expected to interact.

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            January 7, 2013 9:44 AM

            I'm assuming in this scenario that I am perfectly willing to pause the game and partake of conversation with her from time to time.

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        January 7, 2013 8:16 AM

        It's nice but it's like the main selling point. they would sell more by just focusing on "Tegra 4 is more powerful than PSVita" and pushing some games.
        Even though I think the Vita is already more than enough.

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          January 7, 2013 8:17 AM

          The big news is that Nvidia thinks the Tegra 4 is powerful enough to compete with modern consoles and it will be in your phone.

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            January 7, 2013 8:25 AM

            but you're waiting for games to be ported to android or stream them which i don't see competing with modern consoles or even the vita. the games on android are ok but they are cell phone games and you're either putzing around mapping on screen controls poorly or waiting for developers to have native controls for the setup. MEH.

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              January 7, 2013 9:27 AM

              Agreed, but so long as stuff everywhere is getting prettier I won't complain too much :D

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        January 7, 2013 11:50 AM

        [deleted]

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        January 7, 2013 2:45 PM

        It has HDMI out so I can play PC games on my big screen tv if I want to, play in the bedroom or on the couch, whatever. It's a nifty idea but I'm not sure it's really going to drive a lot of sales.

        And no, I'm not going to move my computer to the living room for gaming and I'm not going to run some crazy long HDMI cable from my office and down the stairs just to try to game on my tv.

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        January 7, 2013 4:41 PM

        There could be one point to this. That thing has a HDMI output, so you could "stream it" through Shield into your huge plasma with just one relatively short HDMI cable from Shield into TV. Could be interesting. Now just to buy that insanely plasma and I am all set :) And learn how to play games on d-pad, that is.

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      January 7, 2013 7:56 AM

      it would be much cooler if it streamed over any wifi so you could bring this thing with you on vacation and still have access to all your games

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        January 7, 2013 8:16 AM

        That's basically OnLive without the bandwidth or the hardware specialized to push that kind of thing.

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        January 7, 2013 8:54 AM

        VPN could probably solve that for you.

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      January 7, 2013 8:12 AM

      This is so weird, it's one part portable Ouya, one part Wii U steambox, all parts whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

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      January 7, 2013 8:35 AM

      Take my money now!!!!
      Streaming games from my Pc is enough to warrant a purchase
      If it works well in some way with diablo 3 then I'm in

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      January 7, 2013 10:10 AM

      [deleted]

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      January 7, 2013 11:09 AM

      Ooooohhh...this just officially went on my radar. Wow.

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      January 7, 2013 11:19 AM

      Ugly lookin' thing. I might give it a try if it's cheap enough.

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        January 7, 2013 7:48 PM

        Thinking through what we know of the Nexus 7, I'm thinking this thing will come out at $199 or even $249, and that'll be with little or no storage at all. Why? Well, it's slated to release in Q2. That could mean it'll be the first product to market with the Tegra 4 chip in it. Nvidia would probably want to maximize R&D recovery on the first product to market. If the Nexus 7, granted with a 7in screen, came in at a loss @ $199, AND the Nexus used the already established Tegra 3, then this thing would most likely have to come out $199 or even $249. And consider that price point is in-line with the other portable systems, there ya go.

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      January 7, 2013 2:41 PM

      I guess it would be useful for rendering different viewports for local multiplayer.

      And then I'd rather just take multple screen local multiplayer support from games, to use with my existing controllers and screens.

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      January 7, 2013 7:52 PM

      It's seriously like a Creative labs product from 1992 - it's fucking incredible how they summoned that much ugly in that amount of space.

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      January 7, 2013 8:08 PM

      The D-pad is round instead of cross-shaped. Definite no buy.

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