LAS VEGAS—Who needs the PS Vita? Nvidia today announced "Project Shield," the company's first-ever branded consumer electronics product: a clamshell, handheld, Android-based gaming system.
Project Shield is the first flagship device for Nvidia's new Tegra 4 chipset, and another attempt by Nvidia to push the realm of Android gaming forward.
"There are millions and millions of Android gamers, and the games are getting better than ever," Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said.
Project Shield has a five-inch, 720p touch screen in its top half. The bottom half is all gaming controller: two analog sticks, a D-pad, buttons and bumpers. On the back, you'll find an HDMI port and MicroSD slot. The device connects to the Internet with Wi-Fi. Shield has enough battery life to play games for 5-10 hours or show HD video for 24 hours, Huang said.
Shield runs "pure Android - we didn't put a skin on top of it, we didn't change it," Huang said, but Nvidia has added some preloaded apps. Pressing an Nvidia logo button on the Shield launches the device into a simplified gaming menu which seems to be preloaded - it's probably an app, not a skin, though.
Huang showed off Project Shield in several compelling demos. First, he booted it up into an ordinary Android interface, where it looked like any Android 4.1 or 4.2 device. Then he played a 4K-resolution video - a trailer for the Will Smith movie "After Earth" - to an LG 4K TV.
Boxing and combat games downloaded from the Android Market played beautifully, of course, both on the Shield screen and in 720p resolution on the TV. Shield can also play streamed PC games over a local network when connected to a PC with a GeForce GTX 650 or better graphics card and the appropriate software. After having some trouble getting the function working, Huang fired up Assassin's Creed 3. The company didn't suggest PC games could be streamed remotely, though.
Gamers with two Shields can play in multiplayer mode, with the devices showing and outputting different images, Huang said. So, for instance, you could have two racers' screens showing their own car cockpit views while a big-screen TV shows an spectator's view.
"You can imagine all kinds of different ways now to create games," Huang said.
Shield goes up in the handheld gaming market against some big opponents, primarily Sony and Nintendo. How Nvidia prices the device will matter a lot, as will the availability of top-notch games. Sony's Xperia Play, another Android-powered gaming device, never got high-quality titles. (It also had far less compelling, less powerful hardware than Shield does.)
Shield will arrive on shelves mid-year; it'll be branded and sold by Nvidia but may have a different product name, Nvidia reps said. The company didn't give a price.
No comments:
Post a Comment