Home Gaming Nvidia enters the console race with the Shield

Nvidia enters the console race with the Shield

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Shield

As we suspected, Nvidia will be entering the console gaming market with its own Android-powered set-top box – but before you scoff, rolling your eyeballs at yet another android-powered microconsole, Nvidia’s newly-christened Shield consolewill be a little different. For starters, it’s going to be pretty powerful. Yes, it can run Crysis. Crysis 3, in split-screen, in fact.

Nvidia announced the little beast yesterday at GDC – and it’s sporting some impressive hardware. Though it’s not meant to compete with the new consoles, it’s impressive enough to give Microsoft and Sony a bit of a fright. It’s about twice as powerful as an Xbox 360, and less than half the size.

It’ll be based off of Nvidia’s ultra-powerful mobile Tegra X1 processor, which sports a 256-bit Maxwell GPU with 3GB of memory. The Shield console itself will house a MicroSD slot, a Micro USB 2.0 port, two USB Type-A 3.0 ports, gigabit Ethernet port, and HDMI port. The Shield is 4K ready, too – though I doubt it’ll be able to run any actual games at that resolution. Instead, it’ll do 4K video at 60hz.

When t comes to any console though, games are the most important thing – and it’ll launch with 50-title strong library of games. Not your average Android games, mind you. Here’s a list of the sort of games you’ll find on NVidia’s Shield:

Doom 3, Crysis 3, Portal, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, The Talos Principle, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel all run on the hardware.

“What we need is a great store,” Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsen Huang said. “Well, Google Play will have thousands of games. We created a store to curate the best of the best games, the ones designed for Shield.”

It’ll also be able to stream games, not only from your own desktop, but also from Nvidia’s own Grid cloud service – reportedly at 1080p and 60fps.

And it’s affordable. Coupled with a controller, the Shield console will cost a cool $200. While the world really, really doesn’t need another Android-powered console, with Nvidia’s backing, this could be the one that actually makes a dent in the marketplace.

What do you think? Is this what you want from a set-top box, or should Nvidia leave consoles to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo?

Last Updated: March 4, 2015

23 Comments

  1. Admiral Chief

    March 4, 2015 at 07:45

  2. Admiral Chief

    March 4, 2015 at 07:46

    KOTOR!

    Reply

    • Pariah

      March 4, 2015 at 08:51

      That runs on an ipad 3, so that’s not even a big deal. Except that it’s one of the best games ever made.

      Reply

    • Sgt. M

      March 4, 2015 at 11:10

      I haven’t played this. But I want to the way everyone goes on about it

      Reply

  3. Blood Emperor Trevor

    March 4, 2015 at 07:47

    I’m really surprised at that price, which is not bad & very un-Nvidia. But it seems like it’s only getting PC ports of what are essentially last-gen games, to start with anyway. Definitely can’t point at exclusives as a reason for getting it. So… not for me thanks, I’ve got better things to waste money on.

    Reply

    • Uberutang

      March 4, 2015 at 09:25

      Um, you can stream ANY game you run on your actual NVIDIA powered PC to it… so it then plays all games from all the pc libraries.

      Reply

  4. Hammersteyn

    March 4, 2015 at 07:47

    Good luck to them. What the need is their own library of exclusives though

    Reply

    • Uberutang

      March 4, 2015 at 09:26

      It can play any pc game via home streaming or grid streaming, so it has every single pc exclusive banked.

      Reply

      • Hammersteyn

        March 4, 2015 at 09:37

        O_o wow

        Reply

        • Uberutang

          March 4, 2015 at 09:38

          * that can use a controller that is 🙂
          The valve one solves that by having a more ‘clever’ controller (from what they have shown)

          Reply

          • Matthew Holliday

            March 4, 2015 at 09:39

            aye, controller support in some of the more noteworthy recent games is lacking.

  5. Admiral Chief

    March 4, 2015 at 07:48

    That price sure makes a good argument

    Reply

  6. Admiral Chief

    March 4, 2015 at 07:48

    I wonder how it performs against the EDE or the FAWR?

    Reply

  7. FoxOneZA

    March 4, 2015 at 07:51

    If the console ever comes to our shores ????

    Reply

  8. Andrew Chunis

    March 4, 2015 at 08:43

    cool!

    Reply

  9. Spaffy

    March 4, 2015 at 09:11

    At which market is it aimed at though?

    It’s not competing with pc, as my son’s pc already plays all those title and it didn’t cost me R2k.
    I don’t see it competing with one of the consoles, unless it has exclusives.

    It’s not competing with Android devices as the are some much cheaper ones.

    Reply

  10. Avi

    March 4, 2015 at 09:15

    Kewl, im game dont mind splashing out the 2k, for a kewl looking console that plays 4k @ 60hz,
    Dont actually know what a 4k dvd player cost or do u even get one?

    Reply

  11. BMXWufam

    March 4, 2015 at 09:20

    1st thing I’m thinking is, can I build a custom case for this, add a monitor and turn it into a mobile unit?

    Reply

  12. Ranting Raptor

    March 4, 2015 at 10:03

    Having watched some of it, the AAA games that it boasts, aren’t those exclusively running of the GRID cloud though? Not sure if I misinterpreted that bit?

    Reply

  13. Ghost In The Rift

    March 4, 2015 at 14:14

    I don’t see this sticking around, oh , hey Gamecube , nice to see your on top of the charts of consoles(said no 1 ever)

    Reply

  14. MAcethy

    March 4, 2015 at 16:52

    Good Lord is everyone and their grandmother making an Android console/Steam machine/VR headset/smartwatch these days!?!

    Reply

  15. SIo

    March 4, 2015 at 21:26

    1TopSpy’s Skype tracking feature gathers data from the user’s Skype app account so you can stay fully informed of goings-on at home and at work. You can spy on their Skype chats and find out who they’re online with. This lets you quickly spot any unusual contacts and stop potential problems before they occur. You can also you can view the names of everyone they Skype call with, so their conversations will never be a mystery.

    Reply

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