Firsthand Impressions of Now-Delayed NVIDIA SHIELD

NVIDIA's Android-based gaming gaming handheld called SHIELD was to start shipping today to customers who had pre-ordered it. Reader MojoKid writes "Unfortunately, in its last round of QA work, NVIDIA uncovered a problem with a third-party component used in SHIELD and will be pushing the launch date out into July. NVIDIA is, however, allowing some members of the press to talk a bit about their experiences with a couple of Tegra 4-optimized games — namely Real Boxing and Blood Sword: Sword of Ruin — and also about an AR Drone controlled by SHIELD with a bird's eye view. The AR Drone streams video from its on-board HD camera to the SHIELD device as you fly. Just launching the thing high into the air and peering into trees or over the houses in the neighborhood is really cool."

Comments

Both links to the same page...

[Anonymous Coward]

...for double the hits.

Re:Both links to the same page...

[briancox2]

"NVIDIA's Android-based gaming gaming handheld ..." ... for double the gaming too!

Android still needs better games.

[Picass0]

According to wikipedia there are over 900 million Android mobile devices in the world. That's a lot of potential gamers who want to play something better than Fruit Ninja. At this point EA ports some of their stuff and then there's Gameloft - everything they publish would be laughed off another platform.

I have a Tegra 3 based device - an Asus Transformer - and Need for Speed is the only game I play that doesn't piss me off.

"...but there's no buttons or joystick and so controls suck" Bullshit. I've paired a Wii classic controller through bluetooth and used it to play old MAME arcade stuff. There's countless bluetooth joysticks in the world. Game publishers could code the option to use them (and tell gamers it's heavily recomended) and then start writing some decent games.

Re:Android still needs better games.

[Anonymous Coward]

900 M devices & most owners who will not pay a single penny for any extra software.

Especially to a US (game) company.

Re:Android still needs better games.

[Megane]

...but they will pay for that pink hair on their character. And a sparkly unicorn for it to ride around on. Who needs to charge for razor handles when you can sell personalized blades to pre-teens?

Re:Android still needs better games.

[BasilBrush]

Possibly. However people tend to undervalue software. People that complain that a phone app costs 99c, then go spend $3 on a coffee. There seem to be plenty of people that see hardware as tangible and something they won't get for free so they'll pay for it. But then software cost is avoidable, either by just sticking to free software or by pirating commercial stuff.

So I expect there's an awful lot of people that would buy hardware add-ons that won't pay for games.

You said "tend", and I think that's right. But it may be a pretty weak tendency.

Re:Drone

[CambodiaSam]

I'd rather not encourage them to grow. Wait, is that what you meant?

Re:another failed device

[rodrigoandrade]

Not at the currently asking price, nope.

If it worked as a standalone unit, then maybe, but oh wait, I already own a PS Vita, Note 2, Nexus 10, and notebook.

I'm pretty sure most people already have at least one portable device to play games on, making the Shield effectively superfluous.

No Wii Remote on Android 4.2

[tepples]

I've paired a Wii classic controller through bluetooth

The application you probably used to do this stopped working under Android 4.2. Now all I get on my Nexus 7 is "No route to host".

There's countless bluetooth joysticks in the world.

But not 900 million of them. How many people would be willing to buy a $60 Bluetooth joystick that clamps onto a phone or tablet just to play a $3 game?

AR Drone

[Saethan]

What's the point of mentioning the AR Drone? Any device running Android or iOS (Windows and Linux as well, there are plenty of open source projects that can control it) can do this.

Use a USB controller

[neurojab]

It's a little known fact that Android supports USB controllers... I use one from time to time on the nexus 7.
Adding a $9 USB gamepad and a USB OTG cable can immensely improve the tablet gaming experience.

Re:Use a USB controller

[tepples]

Adding a $9 USB gamepad and a USB OTG cable can immensely improve the tablet gaming experience.

I've used a USB OTG cable to connect a controller to my Nexus 7. But this runs into a few problems in practice. Solve all these problems and I'll agree with you.

First, it might work for tablets if you already have a stand, but can you recommend something to hold a phone in place while the user is holding the controller? The Shield has a hinge to hold the screen in place, much like the Game Boy Advance SP. It's like the difference between a laptop and a tablet with a separate keyboard, and an integrated keyboard dock is one of the big selling points of the Transformer and the Surface.

Second, a lot of cheap USB gamepads that I've tried have a D-pad that makes it way too easy to press diagonally, causing the character to crouch into a roll (Down) or jump (Up) when I'm trying to make him go straight. I've found that Nintendo and PlayStation 1 controllers have decent directional pads, but then I'd need to buy and carry two adapters: one to USB and one to OTG.

Last but not least, the game needs to support a controller, and I haven't been able to find an option in Google Play Store to narrow to controller-friendly titles. The fact that not everybody already owns an appropriate controller, adapter, and clamp tends to discourage some developers from porting controller-friendly titles to Android in the first place because who wants to pay tens of dollars for a gamepad, cable, clamp, and shipping to play a $3 title?