Nvidia’s Shield gaming device debuts today as the geek’s ultimate gadget. At $299, it’s a steep price, considering you can get a home game console for that much. But this portable gaming device can do a lot, and it goes a long way toward bringing better quality and wider variety games to both handhelds and living room TVs.
Ever since Shield was announced in January, the question at hand has been whether Nvidia is really serious about making Shield into a successful alternative to both traditional gaming handhelds and consoles. For sure, this is a way to get Nvidia’s Tegra mobile processor chips back into gaming, after it was shut out of the game consoles and mobile game players. That’s a ploy that rings of desperation. But Shield is also part of a crafty plan to bring Android into a powerful game handheld, take Steam games into living room TVs, and find a way to extend Nvidia’s cloud gaming technology.
Shield has the backing and credibility of a multibillion company, as Nvidia is the world’s largest maker of stand-alone graphics chips. But when it comes to console alternatives, Shield has a lot of rivals: Ouya, GameStick, Moga, Wikipad, Razer Edge, Green Throttle, GamePop, and others. All of them are aimed at dragging the game industry kicking and screaming into a more open and flexible cross-platform world. The case for Shield is that it offers a high-end gaming experience and full entertainment on the go. At the same time, it gives you a way to widen your gaming options on your television.
Shield plays Android games from the Google Play store, but it also plays TegraZone games that have been optimized to run on Nvidia’s Tegra 4 mobile processor, which just came out and runs at a fast 1.9 gigahertz. You can also use Shield to watch movies, real time Location system, read e-books, read your email, and surf the web. Tegra 4 games can take advantage of features including real-time lighting effects, depth of field, soft shadows, high res textures, real-time smoke and particle simulation, and higher polygon counts. Basically, they look good.
I really loved the sound of Shield’s high-fidelity speakers. It has a good bass sound and a high dynamic range for clear and pounding audio. It also has a 3.5 millimeter stereo headphone/mic jack, and it supports 8-channel PCM audio over an HDMI cable. That came through especially good with a title with lots of explosions like Expendable: Rearmed.
My kids, however, really went crazy over the Shield’s ability to control an AR Drone. It took us just a few minutes to assemble the drone and set it on the grass. We downloaded the free AR Drone control app and fired it up. The system immediately detected the AR Drone. I tapped the screen and it lifted off. We took turns flying it around. The camera on the drone streams video directly back to the Shield’s screen, so you can see what the drone sees. You can do this with an iPad or iPhone too, but it was easier to control with the thumbsticks of the Shield.
Since this is the ultimate nerd machine, we had better include some of the nerd details. It has support for Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS. It has 16 gigabytes of built-in flash memory and a slot to expand it with another 64 gigabytes. You can’t use the memory card to add new apps or games to your Shield, but Nvidia says that it will add that functionality in a later update.
It has a three-axis gyro and a 3-axis accelerometer for motion sensing. The dual analog joysticks are shorter than a normal game controller and they’re sunk lower in the unit so that you’ll be able to close the lid. The Bluetooth connection allows you to play multiplayer games such as Virtua Tennis with other Shield users.
Nvidia says the battery lasts for about four to five hours of gameplay for Tegra 4-optimized games and up to 10 hours of gameplay for typical Android games. You can watch high-definition movies for 15 hours and listen to music for 40 hours on a battery charge.
When you’re hunting for rtls, you can get into the TegraZone store with a single touch. You can also drill down into the Shield Store, PC Games, and games that are already installed on the system. Once you download some games, you can find them in the Shield Games section of the user interface. To play a game, you just tap on an icon. It’s all based on familiar Android user interface design.
Not every Android game is going to look great or work well on the Shield. But Nvidia lists more than 130 games that are optimized to work with a controller. If you’re in doubt, check it on the TegraZone web site. Nvidia is promoting games including Arma Tactics, Burn Zombie Burn!, Dead Trigger 2, Hamilton’s Great Adventure, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Real Boxing, Riptide GP 2 HD, Tainted Keep, The Conduit HD, and Zombie Driver HD.
Nvidia has been fairly low key about the launch of the Shield. You haven’t seen it advertised all over the world, and it isn’t yet gearing up for a big worldwide launch beyond its first two territories. That has all of the markings of a cautious game system launch. In an age where being loud matters, Nvidia is launching the Shield in a very quiet way.
Because of that, I was worried about it. But everything I’ve seen of the Shield and its games so far tells me this is a great device for geeks. If those geeks get the word, then Nvidia could have a hit on its hands.
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