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NVIDIA Announces SHIELD Game Console
MojoKid writes: NVIDIA held an event in San Francisco last night at GDC, where the company unveiled a new Android TV streamer, game console, and supercomputer, as NVIDIA's Jen Hsun Huang calls it, all wrapped up in a single, ultra-slim device called NVIDIA SHIELD. The SHIELD console is powered by the NVIDIA Tegra X1 SoC with 3GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, Gig-E and 802.11ac 2x2 MIMO WiFi. It's also 4K Ultra-HD Ready with 4K playback and capture up to 60 fps (VP9, H265, H264) with encode/decode with full hardware processing. The company claims the console provides twice the performance of an Xbox 360. NVIDIA demo'ed the device with Android TV, streaming music and HD movies and browsing social media. The device can stream games from a GeForce powered PC to your television or from NVIDIA's GRID cloud gaming service, just like previous NVIDIA SHIELD devices. Native Android games will also run on the SHIELD console. NVIDIA's plan is to offer a wide array of native Android titles in the SHIELD store, as well as leverage the company's relationships with game developers to bring top titles to GRID. The device was shown playing Gearbox's Borderlands The Pre-Sequel, Doom 3 BFG Edition, Metal Gear Solid V, the Unreal Engine 4 Infiltrator demo and yes, even Crysis 3.
'nuff said
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I thought they had "unveiled" essentially the same thing ~3 years ago.
More consoles that support PC games...means more developers make games for PC...means more games for ME to pirate! YEAH!!!
How many times are they going to launch this turdkite?
I think you meant turducken.
As soon as I saw the console with its angular X-styled ridges and lime green LED "V-slash" I immediately thought XBox. So possibly not a good choice in styling if you want to stand out from the crowd.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
What retarded backronym have they come up with to justify writing it "SHIELD"? And how about "NVIDIA"?
The games they showed running natively looked good. Way better than any other android system out there. The streaming will be great also. Being able to buy games on launch day is a big plus. I have played with the streaming on the original shield and I rarely ran into lag. This will be on a wired network which will work even better. I can also hide this behind the tv, at $199 this looks like a viable alternative to XBOX ONE and PS4.
What a pointless site. a handful of stories posted, never modernized, mocked the idea of user submissions and didn't want to switch a flag to basically make everyone have moderator points on each story.
A very very very sad state of affairs.
This is my "once a year" trek to slashdot, I don't think it'll be here next year.
3GB RAM??
What, did they run out of it or something?
We don't need no steekin' case, just hand over a circuit board with exposed components. If you look close enough you'll be able to see a tiny NVIDIA printed on the thing in flaky white. That should be brand recognition enough for anybody. If we want some extra protection, we'll put it into an old school box from fifth grade, and if we want it to look cool we'll tape a vintage paper magazine page to it.
Just look at all the money companies like Apple and Ferrari waste on designing products with a specific look and style, and creating eye-catching adverts that highlight it. Didn't Apple almost go out of business a couple times already? See, that kind of "styling" crap is worthless. Nobody cares what a product looks like. I mean the Pontiac Aztek was a mega hit (despite looking like it was thought up by a 10 year old who couldn't find their pencil sharpener)... oh wait.
Unless they can get a bunch of developer on-board for *native* games, then nobody will care.
The "streaming games" thing is a red-herring. For some reason, everyone seems to think it's a great idea, and it *is*, but not as the PRIMARY way to play games. Especially if you need a fairly powerful PC with an Nvidia card to do so. Streaming over the internet is okay, but it's SO dependent on your connection quality (and your bandwidth limits). It can work, though, obviously. But I wouldn't want to be stuck with it for AAA titles.
Still, for $199, they might have something here - a relatively cheap and powerful console that runs Android software could be pretty cool. It would almost be like a return to the old "home computer" days.
Dear Nvidia
I don't want a console. I have an ultra-fast system that plays games, has wide compatibility, can hook up to a TV wirelessles or via HDMI, can surf the web, run netflix, watch live TV, etc. It's called my PC and it's faster. I also have no interest in using joysticks to control anything ever.
Sincerely,
everyone
Honestly, I don't doubt the technical feasibility of an Android console, but they just don't seem to be catching on.
I was one of the "early adopters" that bought an Ouya. I figured I would mostly use it for XBMC anyways and the games would just be a bonus. Thankfully XBMC works OK as the games never really materialized there (the Final Fantasy ports are about the only thing decent available).
I also bought a FireTV - again, mostly as a video device (Netflix, Hulu) for the living room TV. Again - the games haven't really taken off. The Telltale games are available on it (but then again they're available almost everywhere) and I did see SW: Knights of the Old Republic was made available for it, but overall its pretty stale.
Personally, I'm not going to be rushing out for this one until it proves itself to not be another flop. The only thing that MIGHT would interest me would be the ability to stream games from a PC, but all the steaming options I've seen in the past recommend a wireless or "robust" Wifi connection, which I generally interpret to mean it'll suck over WIFI.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Already ruined by the stubby xbox style controller
So are they out of form-factors to iterate and can make a Shield (Portable) 2 now? That's all I really want.
No, the first one was an initial handheld gaming entry. Competed favorably with the handhelds out at that time.
The second SHIELD was a tablet with a wireless controller that resembled the first SHIELD's body. It was a bit more muscular than the handheld.
This is their first console offering. It's got their TK1 in it instead of the Tegra3 the predecessors had. It makes the previous attempts a bit weak in comparison.
To compare consoles, it's roughly the jump from the first to the current of what Sony had with the PS2 to the PS3 or Microsoft did from the Classic to the 360 to make a comparison most would "get"- and it's no different. If it's unveiling the same thing...heh...Sony and Microsoft did it twice before them.
Soon to be renamed to Hydra
And the Shield Portable has been discontinued.
Which is a real shame, because all my friends that see mine want one - I bring it to work, and the general reaction is 'Whoa, what IS that?' followed by 'Does it run emulators?' and 'Where can I get it?' - to which the answer is now 'Ebay, for more than double the MSRP. If you're lucky.'
I really hope they make a Portable 2. The thing really is great for playing all sorts of games on.
I hope so. I miss the console wars of the 90's Walking in the snow for an hour each way to rent Nintendo, SAGA and Turbo GFX games.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
the "Phantom" console has finally arrived.
the last of the great vaporware legends has been realized.
Hopefully it doesn't suck as bad as Duke Nukem did upon arrival
Imagine a beowolf cluster of those things!
/relatively_low_effort_joke
How I've know about SHIELD (and even held it in my hand at a dev event in what Americans call Eastern Europe) about a year ago. Not trying be sarcastic, but how is this an announcement?
The green LED turns off.
The company claims the console provides twice the performance of an Xbox 360.
This console is said to have twice the power of a console that was superceeded by it's next gen counterpart 16 months ago. I don't know that this is the strongest selling point for a console unless that was a typo and it was supposed to say Xbox One.
Sounds a lot like OnLive's 'microconsole', except with some real horsepower.
I mean what's one of the biggest draws of the PC platform? Steam sales! Yet I see new PC games that are just a few months old going for 40+% off easy.
The publisher makes more revenue from each copy sold in a Steam sale than from each used console game disc sold by GameStop.
You could try one of JXD's gaming tablets, such as the JXD S5110b or the JXD S7300.
That's essentially what it is, except it plays crappy android titles alongside GRID streaming and local PC game streaming...but ONLY from windows machines with Nvidia cards.
At least the PS TV has better native titles.
I think it was Apple that started naming their products the same name. If I told you that a bought an iMac which one do you think i was refering to? The one from last year? From 5 years ago? The one from 15 years ago? All called iMac. even the "G3" ,"G4" and G5" are not officially part of the name.
Will NVIDIA be paying the Microsoft Tax?
"and supercomputer, as NVIDIA's Jen Hsun Huang calls it"
No.
This is a supercomputer.
Mr. Huang has no fucking clue.
The improvements I'd like to see on the PC version are due to the screen being much closer, and I have a keyboard. That means allowing smaller fonts and fitting more information on the screen. Lots of console ports have giant fonts that make their scrolling lists (inventory, etc) only a few lines and one the PC you scroll, scroll, scroll, to get to that piece of ore that's 28 items down on the list. More text on the screen and less scrolling or paging - PC users can take the smaller fonts since they're not 10 feet away from the TV. And take advantage of the keyboard - use the page up and down keys to good effect, allow remapping, and let the scroll wheel and multiple mice buttons do useful things.
Just to make sure I understand you correctly:
the fact that on first run it loaded to a "Press Start" screen felt like sloppy QA
In other words, make sure key labels are correct for the current key bindings, and not hardcoded to the names of Xbox 360 controller buttons. Also make options in on-screen menus clickable with the mouse.
clearly explaining why the keys are where they are by default
How could such an explanation be done correctly?
PC users are typically sitting closer to smaller higher resolution screens whereas console users are typically sitting further back, looking at larger, lower resolution displays.
In other words, Steam Big Picture is atypical. And what's the difference between a 1080p HDTV and a 1080p desktop PC monitor, or between a 720p HDTV and a 720p laptop monitor?
PC games aren't going away because I bought a PlayStation or a Wii U or an XBox.
You by yourself won't cause PC games to go away. But if enough other gamers abandon PC for consoles, even more major game studios will consider the PC unprofitable.
All I'm trying to do is explain why anyone would buy a console and what the upsides are.
In that case, does this page sum up something close to your position?
I want a box that plugs into the TV and plays games with out being fiddly, loud, power sucking and horrible.
Integrated graphics have become adequate, and I don't see how a PC with integrated graphics is especially "loud" or "power sucking" compared to a PS3, 360, PS4, or Xbox One. I may be willing to grant you "fiddly" and "horrible" if you can explain them.
My consumer choices do not require your approval.
I never meant to imply that they did. If I did end up implying so, please help me figure out where so that I can learn not to do so again. I'm only trying to understand how consoles are ideal for your use case with the intent of figuring out how to make other platforms less bad. Or is wanting to know what makes a platform good itself an "entitled attitude"?
Just to deal with fiddly and horrible, the second you have to think about a file system or running processes or system configurations, you've blown it as far as UX for games go. So there's fiddly and horrible for you.
If you're moving saved games from one console hard drive or memory card to another, or freeing up GBs on a console's hard drive for a downloadable game or for a disc game's mandatory install, that's a file system. And as for "system configurations", some console makers' naming conventions don't make this easy either: "DS" vs. "3DS" vs. "2DS" vs. "New 3DS", or "Xbox" vs. "Xbox One".
I doubt a PC can match the idle power consumption
Anyone know how much power a PC uses in suspend?