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$299 Android Gaming Tablet Reviewed
Vigile (99919) writes "Last week NVIDIA announced the SHIELD Tablet and SHIELD Controller, and reviews are finally appearing this morning. Based on the high performance Tegra K1 SoC that integrates 192 Kepler architecture CUDA cores, benchmarks reveal that that the SHIELD Tablet is basically unmatched by any other mobile device on the market when it comes to graphics performance — it is more than 2.5x the performance of the Apple A7 in some instances. With that power NVIDIA is able to showcase full OpenGL versions of games like Portal and Half-Life 2 running at 1080p locally on the 19:12 display or output to a TV in a "console mode." PC Perspective has impressions of that experience as well as using the NVIDIA Game Stream technology to play your PC games on the SHIELD Tablet and controller. To go even further down the rabbit hole, you can stream your PC games from your desktop to your tablet, output them to the TV in console mode, stream your game play to Twitch from the tablet while overlaying your image through the front facing camera AND record your sessions locally via ShadowPlay and using the Wi-Fi Direct powered controller to send and receive audio. It is incredibly impressive hardware but the question remains as to whether or not there is, or will be, a market for Android-based gaming devices, even those with the power and performance that NVIDIA has built."
Hail HYDRA.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Based on the bugginess of every Tegra device to date and Nvidia's near-total lack of support, you're nuts if you even consider buying this.
And that's the real review from an owner of multiple Tegra products from the first generation onwards. You're welcome.
You'd think Slashdot was populated only by AMD employees.
Seriously, though - the specs are really nice - I'm looking forward to seeing this in production.
What I don't get is what the market for this is. The gaming aspect of it seems to be based on streaming games from a PC, and buying a PC good enough to do that costs a fair bit of money assuming you don't already have one. Game streaming also requires wireless internet access, which means you're probably not going to be taking it out of your home. There's also the issue of what you're going to do with it outside of game streaming - if you want something that can browse the internet when you're away from home, you'd be better off with a 4G phone than a wifi-based tablet.
The real gaming crowd is going to stick to physical PCs because of the superior experience they offer. The casual gaming crowd, who want to play games specifically released for iOS/Android, have cheaper options for accessing those games. Who is the target market?
The SHIELD Tablet... is able to showcase full OpenGL versions of games like Portal and Half-Life 2 running at 1080p
So, the future of gaming is... the past of gaming, but at higher resolution!
Seriously, you want to impress me, do it with a game that's not older than the current 2nd-term Presidency.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Well, unless someone sits and writes specific modules for each possible underlying instruction set, probably not.
Remember, Android is Java - sure, you CAN execute ARM (or in some hardware Intel) instructions - but those are always of the processor-specific modules. Go download the MoboPlayer app, which has specific modules to accelerate video for each type of device.
Can't see that happening for an emulator, especially when 99% of the time, the performance in Java would be fine anyway. Thus, you're really asking if someone is going to bother to write, say, an emulator for a cutting-edge device that a PC would struggle to emulate, plus specific ARM modules to make it run at feasible speeds. And the answer is probably no, especially when the market moves this fast.
"running at 1080p"
Take that, Xbone.
Dolphin has made some significant progress. See this for yourself.
Mind you, the real consoles cost a lot less than this tablet so it's still novelty.
Nobody wants to develop on Android
iOS Active / 1.2 million+ apps (As of June 2014) vs Google Play Active / 1.3+ million apps (as of July 2014)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
You could not be more wrong
So I don't know how this is supposed to catch on when the first I hear abouts its release is on slashdot. The Wii U, Ouya, and Windows Phone had a lot more hype. I suppose it increase their chances at a a profit assuming they don't make many of them.
You have to want a better streaming experience than Valve's Steam already offers for free (and you can buy a Windows Tablet for the same price, and Valve is expected to support Android and iOS soon). You can use whatever system and whatever video card you want to stream the game to and from - even go wired ethernet to get around the inevitable problems you get streaming games over wireless.
If you go Shield, the tablet price is just the beginning: you have to have a mid-range GeForce card purchased in at least the last 2 years ($120+ if you don't already have one), the controller + stand ($100), and of course a suitable dual-band router runs at least $70 (most people use the crap one that came with their internet install).
In all, you could be on the hook for anywhere from $400 all the way up to $600. That's getting DANGEROUSLY close to the same price as an entry-level gaming PC, so again the need just doesn't present itself there.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
By the way, now the costs for hardware are passed onto the game publisher rather than the end-user.
Something like OnLive stops working so well once ISPs start charging per GB, at which point the end user has to pay both the ISP and the game publisher. What will the market bear? And I'm told such streaming fails for twitchier genres that rely on eye-blink reactions.
Various flavors of Survival Horror; from Alan Wake, that Slenderman game, Rust, etc. Then you have your mobile games (remember cell-phone games from 15 years ago? Yea, me either) like Angry Birds, Punch Quest, etc.
There's also CtOS Mobile, which allows mobile players to engage with console players, a fairly new concept.
Mass Effect 3 had some novel elements, such as the option to skip the action portions and basically turn the game into an interactive movie.
Oh, and Kerbal Space Program! Never played anything quite like that one before.
Also, 'annoyance games,' my term, in which I would classify crap like Flappy Bird and F*uck This Game, which seem designed to irritate the shit out of you.
Of course, there's more to innovation than creating new genres.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese