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Nvidia Releases Tegra 4 Powered SHIELD Handheld

Posted by Unknown on from the slices-and-dices dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Today, Nvidia officially releases the SHIELD. After an unexpected delay last month, the company dropped the price of its hotly-anticipated handheld gaming system from $350 to just $300. Sporting a 5-inch 720p touchscreen attached to an XBox-style controller, the SHIELD is the first serious Android-based handheld gaming device. The SHIELD is also the first major device top ship with Nvidia's new Tegra 4 SoC. But the potentially killer feature of the SHIELD is its ability to steam heavy-duty PC games from your desktop right into your hands. Right now the selection of PC games is pretty scarce, with just 21 titles to choose from so far, though Nvidia promises more to come. Tom's Hardware just posted an exhaustive review of the Nvidia SHIELD, which includes demos of both Android gaming and PC streaming, display and battery testing, plus the usual bevy of performance tests versus the Tegra 3-based Nexus 7 (2012), the new Nexus 7 carrying a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro, the iPhone 5, and a Wintel tablet with the Atom Z2760. Tegra 4 presents nearly four times the performance of Tegra 3, and leaves most of its competition in the dust. However, it also means that Nvidia is now the only ARM competitor without an OpenGL ES 3.0 implementation on the horizon, making Nvidia's new position as top dog quite uncertain."

5 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ability to steam heavy-duty PC games by YalithKBK · · Score: 5, Funny

    Play video games AND get the wrinkles out of your clothes at the same time! This is revolutionary!

  2. OpenGL by blackraven14250 · · Score: 4, Informative

    However, it also means that Nvidia is now the only ARM competitor without an OpenGL ES 3.0 implementation on the horizon, making Nvidia's new position as top dog quite uncertain.

    Tegra 5 is supposed to be OpenGL 4.3, so I wouldn't be concerned about them not having an OpenGL ES 3.0 chip.

  3. Got my hands on one at PDXLAN by Psyberian · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Got hands one at PDXLAN in Portland a few weeks ago. What can I say but holy crap, I gotta have one. It's a like an oversized dreamcast controller with a LCD screen. It's streaming seemed flawless. We ran Borderlands and a few other games without issue. They were stating a pretty insane battery life, but that will be left to see what it really is. The screen was beautiful, it has a large number of games, and more coming. It was also running steam if I remember correctly. I know this isn't much of are review, but more of just saying, this thing rocks.

    1. Re:Got my hands on one at PDXLAN by dpidcoe · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There was an nvidia booth at maker faire in san mateo this year, and they had one there. I was attending with a friend who was a game developer, so we went to check it out. I was thoroughly unimpressed, not because there was anything wrong with the system (it played games as far as I could tell), but because all of our technical questions were met with blank stares. Eventually they told us to come back in an hour because the one technical guy was off getting lunch or something. Apparently nvidia sent a booth full of marketing people to an event specifically for engineers and technical people.

  4. Re:Ability to steam heavy-duty PC games by O-Deka-K · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is this what's known as "vaporware"?