Nvidia Officially Announce Project SHIELD
The handheld market seems to be a very fickle place. The PS Vita didn’t do so well in 2012, Sony reported some less than impressive sales figures in October of last year, as reported by Eurogamer. Still being outsold in Japan by the PSP, the Vita’s predecessor. The 3DS on the other hand seems to have done much better through 2012, as with the Vita, it was outsold by the DS the year before. It may well have been the lack of decent release title for the Vita, but we shall find that out before long, as the new year will be bringing a batch of much stronger selling points to the under performing handheld, namely Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty.
Which ever way you look at it, it’s not the easiest of places to throw down in. Although that doesn’t seem to be putting Nvidia off, who have now officially unveiled their contender, in the guise of Project SHIELD.
What will really be of interest here (mostly to PC gamers), is that you can use the device to wirelessly take control of your PC and play games using your desktops powerful hardware. I say powerful, because you need a pretty high end machine to able to do this.
- GPU: NVIDIA® Kepler™-based GeForce GTX 650 (Desktop) or
GTX 660M (Notebook) or higher- CPU: Intel Core i5 or equivalent or higher
- System Memory: 4 GB or higher
- Software: GeForce Experience™ application and latest GeForce drivers
- OS: Windows 7 or higher
- Router: Router: 802.11a/g/n
(Recommended: 802.11n Dual Band / MIMO Router)
This isn’t bank breaking specs, but it’s not something that everyone will have just laying around. For anyone who does have this kind of hardware, the deciding factor may well be how much lag there is from PC to handheld. Thus far it seems like the answer is, not very much. engadget had some details on the device and it seems like good news so far. You will also be allowed to access your Steam account using Big Picture.
“NVIDIA’s promising 5 to 10 hours of gaming, and 24 hours of HD viewing out of the 38-watt rechargeable lithium ion batteries built-in, a swanky audio system “on par with” jamboxes, and a full-on Android gaming experience. A micro SD sits next to an HDMI output, one USB port, and a standard eighth inch audio jack, directly below the customizable 5-inch “retinal display” touchscreen. Update: It’s a 1,280 x 720 screen at 294 dpi, for the record.”
Project SHIELD will be powered by Tegra 4, reportedly the worlds fastest mobile chip, boasting a custom 72-core NVIDIA GeForce GPU and a Quad-core A15 CPU. As good as this sounds, if you have the choice to connect to your PC, this will always be the better option.
Not forgetting that Project SHIELD will come with the latest version of Android Jelly Bean for those who want to do some Android gaming. It will apparently be released with some great titles and the option is there to buy more from Tegrazone. So instead of struggling with limited controls on your phone, you can now play them with the handhelds control pad. Speaking of which, the controller that the 5-inch 720p retinal multi-touch display attaches to, is somewhat reminiscent of the first Xbox controller, but instead of trying to explain it to you, here is a nifty video from Nvidia’s YouTube feed.