Nvidia announces portable gaming device - Project Shield

Just announced at the Nvidia Press Conference 
Tegra 4 powered, Android OS..... Looks like a controller with a screen attached. 
 5 inch  720p multitouch retinal display 
link to the product on the official nvidia website.

Has HDMI out to play on TV's and etc.  Looks kinda cool.  

So bizarre, and out of left field. Were there even any rumors about this? I'm impressed they were able to keep it under the radar so long.

That said, I'm shocked that Nvidia is suddenly looking at the market and saying, "Yes, now is clearly the best time for us to enter the handheld hardware market!"

This thing will never happen. Way too insane. We'll hear that it's been cancelled within a year due to "unforeseen changes in the market" or some nonsense.

@Zuldim said:

So bizarre, and out of left field. Were there even any rumors about this? I'm impressed they were able to keep it under the radar so long.

That said, I'm shocked that Nvidia is suddenly looking at the market and saying, "Yes, now is clearly the best time for us to enter the handheld hardware market!"

Yeah these are exactly my thoughts.

I guess after people found out about the Ouya, some higher up at Nvidia went all "hey wait I can get in on this too!" Not sure how this is going to end for either player. I don't think it will end too well, I can't see any gaming-dedicated Android device go far. Then again I've never even played on one before so it might actually turn out pretty cool. More likely not, though.

I'm keen.

STEAM STREAMING TO IT.......I CAN PLAY MY PC GAMES IN THE BATHROOM OR MY KITCHEN NOW. HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

Well that was unexpected.

@Th3_James said:

STEAM STREAMING TO IT.......I CAN PLAY MY PC GAMES IN THE BATHROOM. HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT indeed.

STEAM STREAMING TO IT.......I CAN PLAY MY PC GAMES IN THE BATHROOM OR MY KITCHEN NOW. HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

@Th3_James said:

STEAM STREAMING TO IT.......I CAN PLAY MY PC GAMES IN THE BATHROOM OR MY KITCHEN NOW. HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

I'm never leaving my bathroom now

Awesome. I hope they really nail some smaller market that the Vita/3DS don't satisfy.

Time to fix my wifi situation. Have terrible signal throughout my house. Gonna buy about 3-4 repeaters.

cue bombcast guys talking about how they dont want to play pc/console type games on a portable device

@casper_ said:

cue bombcast guys talking about how they dont want to play pc/console type games on a portable device

I should drill holes in my wall and put wireless keyboard receivers all over my house so I can just use it as a screen

I have no interest in this. This seems like it's for a very specific person though, so good for them I suppose.

cue bombcast guys talking about how they dont want to play pc/console type games on a portable device

I just searched "nvidia" on Google and Forbes has a story on SHIELD, calling in "Disruptive" in the headline. Eat shit, Forbes.

Nvidia's official website has a page on the device. "Featured" games include ACIII, BF3, Borderlands 2, and Skyrim. It's also an Android device.

The screen is 5 inches, 720p, multi-touch. Sounds like they took the one novel idea of the WiiU and focused on it.

There's a catch; you need a pc with a GTX card to stream to Shield.

It looks like an Xbox product. They should have partnered with Microsoft to make this, just like with the Zune HD.

There is nothing about the design that makes it look portable. In some ways this system is more like a Wii U, except with third party support. Since it is running on android I see huge potential for emulators. If this gets priced around 150 bucks maybe it will have a chance competing with VIta; but it probably will go on sale for 300 or more.

This whole endeavor just goes on to show that Nvidia shouldn't have been douche bags with the console makers last generation. Now all three console makers are on ATI for how Nvidia did its business with Microsoft. Not getting any slice of console business is probably what drove them to make their own console.

Everyone seems so focused on the handheld, but that was hardly the focus of their presentation. The amazing thing was that the handheld will be powered by their new Tegra 4, and potentially, any future device with a Tegra 4 processor will have similar capability as the handheld.

Thus, for Nvidia, this is about getting Tegra 4 processors out there in many, many devices and expanding this capability to every device. People keep talking about a "Steam Box", and this has the potential to allow for that and more. Imagine your phone or tablet as a portable "Steam Box" that you can plug into any TV in your home or even just play right on the device. With more and more support for wireless controllers and hardcore controller add-ons for phones and tablets, almost any device with a Tegra 4 could become a "Shield" handheld.

This presentation showed the potential of their new processor, and technology like it will soon be in every major device out there. That's what makes this news so exciting.

So this or Vita?

good luck with that, i hope it works out for them.

Seems like a neat console, But I'm content with my Vita. Thanks anyway Nvidia.

@thabigred said:

It looks like an Xbox product. They should have partnered with Microsoft to make this, just like with the Zune HD.

Microsoft hate PC gaming though, I imagine that is why they inflicted GFWL on us and refuse to allow Forza and such PC release.

Cant Play PC games, no thanks.

@Woodroez said:

I just searched "nvidia" on Google and Forbes has a story on SHIELD, calling in "Disruptive" in the headline. Eat shit, Forbes.

Nvidia's official website has a page on the device. "Featured" games include ACIII, BF3, Borderlands 2, and Skyrim. It's also an Android device.

The screen is 5 inches, 720p, multi-touch. Sounds like they took the one novel idea of the WiiU and focused on it.

There's a catch; you need a pc with a GTX card to stream to Shield.

There's also this Grid thing, which seems to be a cloud gaming servers. What I really hope that they would open up Grid for more than gaming (e.g. scientific computing, processing image features, etc), and let organizations or business entities subscribe to it. That would be interesting.

Anyway, it's interesting to see NVidia trying to enter gaming market.

ou ya this looks ok

Honestly the most interesting part of this device was learning that the introduction video was done in Unreal Engine 4.

@Sooty said:

@thabigred said:

It looks like an Xbox product. They should have partnered with Microsoft to make this, just like with the Zune HD.

Microsoft hate PC gaming though, I imagine that is why they inflicted GFWL on us and refuse to allow Forza and such PC release.

Microsoft does not hate PC gaming. They just failed miserably at it with GFWL and continue to double down on the walled garden approach. I was talking about pure aesthetics, and I don't mean just the green color. It looks like the Xbox slim in matte black in handheld form.

This'll be a new generation's 3DO

I think it says a lot that when you visit the site for this product, the first thing you see isn't a feature list, or a picture of the console, but a photograph of the CPU inside it. It's really weird, and I wouldn't be that surprised if this thing just tanked or even never made it to production, but it is pretty cool that you can play Steam games on it.

this is pretty much the exact thing (plus a lot extra) that the boys on the bombcast were asking for- a device that can stream content from their steam library either locally to the device or pipe it through to their televisions. that alone makes it VERY interesting- not only would your steam games be available on the go, but it's also compelling just as a living room companion. the dealbreaker will be the pricing, however.

i couldn't care less about the android business, but the idea of an untethered steam is VERY interesting indeed.

As much as I like Nvidia I'm just not interested in any handheld, I rarely play my 3DS.

But how do you close it..? Or does the screen detach from the conrtroller?

Looks neat I guess, depending on the price point and when its released I might be interested.

Hey....Nvidia. Um. We need to talk. We know you like to show off and some of your ideas are kinda cool. A handheld streaming device is not cool. As silly as this sounds, if people WANT to play PC games at other points of their house, they would put the PC there. No room? They tend to find ways.

Im kinda glad im not the only one who looks at this and simply goes, "Why?"

Weird handheld, but cool technology I guess. With all of these 'android powered' game devices coming out though are we ever going to get any decent games for android? I honestly don't know of any beyond the "standard" mobile titles.

I guess maybe these devices (this and the other console thing) are going to get their own android titles to take advantage of the better processing power? It just seems weird to me.

Can i play dota on it or not?

But how do you close it..? Or does the screen detach from the conrtroller?

Looks neat I guess, depending on the price point and when its released I might be interested.

@casper_ said:

cue bombcast guys talking about how they dont want to play pc/console type games on a portable device

You mean, cue bombcast guys talking about how they don't want to play PC games. Didn't they only review like ten PC games in all of 2012? :P

I thought it looked neat, I just didn't know who it was for.

@TruthTellah said:

Everyone seems so focused on the handheld, but that was hardly the focus of their presentation. The amazing thing was that the handheld will be powered by their new Tegra 4, and potentially, any future device with a Tegra 4 processor will have similar capability as the handheld.

Thus, for Nvidia, this is about getting Tegra 4 processors out there in many, many devices and expanding this capability to every device. People keep talking about a "Steam Box", and this has the potential to allow for that and more. Imagine your phone or tablet as a portable "Steam Box" that you can plug into any TV in your home or even just play right on the device. With more and more support for wireless controllers and hardcore controller add-ons for phones and tablets, almost any device with a Tegra 4 could become a "Shield" handheld.

This presentation showed the potential of their new processor, and technology like it will soon be in every major device out there. That's what makes this news so exciting.

I'll be damned if that isn't the future. Having one main processing box that sends out video and game streams to your TV, game device, portable device, or phone is what I think all this stuff will eventually involve. Putting it into this context, this makes a lot of sense as a showcase device. It's probably not meant for a mass market audience and as you said, if Tegra 4 is a success, then good on them for it. I think we've got some ways to go before the ideal situation is there but here's hoping Tegra 4 is a step in the right direction. Now the pressure is one Sony and Microsoft to take advantage of this concept with their hardware. Microsoft already has SmartGlass, which is a good start and better if they can really take advantage with their next box. Sony has some of that with the Vita but I think they need to go much further in that direction. Although, there's big talk of Gykai being something they might leverage.

Just as with this last generation of consoles dramatically changing but gradually over the years, this new one just might see us with this kind of full connectivity between tablet, console, etc. and/or further focus on online streaming both of gameplay from a cloud service and video of game and movies from your box to another device. Man, just talking about this shit is making me excited for the next generation of console hardware.

@K9 said:

This whole endeavor just goes on to show that Nvidia shouldn't have been douche bags with the console makers last generation. Now all three console makers are on ATI for how Nvidia did its business with Microsoft. Not getting any slice of console business is probably what drove them to make their own console.

What did they do? I've heard this several times but everyone just seems to know about it so nobody explains why.

If all the next gen consoles are ATI to me this seems like grandstanding. Nvidia have never done mobile GPUs too well (phone and tablet size, not laptop), so by making Shield they can go to Samsung etc and say "look how dedicated we are to this, put our chips in your next set of phones".

The actual design of the device BLEEDS bad design.

As much as I don't like it, android gaming consoles are here to stay for a fair while.

@Worcanna said:

Hey....Nvidia. Um. We need to talk. We know you like to show off and some of your ideas are kinda cool. A handheld streaming device is not cool. As silly as this sounds, if people WANT to play PC games at other points of their house, they would put the PC there. No room? They tend to find ways.

Im kinda glad im not the only one who looks at this and simply goes, "Why?"

Why not?

There are three major console game console developing companies who have been around way longer than they should have by now and I'm bored of it. So why the hell not? Let's have Nvidia come out of left field (at least for me) with this quirky little device. More companies taking risks on ideas means we profit in the long run.

There's certainly a lot of really great functionality to come from something like this, but jesus christ is it tacky as hell.

Who in the fuck thinks "You know what sucks? The fact I can't play Skyrim on my PC while taking a shit."

It kind of looks like a terrible mock-up.

I'm more interested in getting a Tegra 4 in a Nexus 7...2. Love my current one but Tegra 3 has always been a bit on the slow side when stacked against the competition.

@Metzo_Paino said:

@K9 said:

This whole endeavor just goes on to show that Nvidia shouldn't have been douche bags with the console makers last generation. Now all three console makers are on ATI for how Nvidia did its business with Microsoft. Not getting any slice of console business is probably what drove them to make their own console.

What did they do? I've heard this several times but everyone just seems to know about it so nobody explains why.

When Microsoft was trying to manufacture newer iterations of Xbox they requested Nvidia to adjust their GPU price since the card was months old. Nvidia refused to budge on their original pricing. Now no console manufacturer wants to do business with them.

wat?