Hands-on with NVIDIA Shield: NVIDIA’s project turned product

Posted on 14/05/2013 by Ben Gilbert

Handson with NVIDIA's project turned product, NVIDIA Shield

NVIDIA's Project Shield now has an official name (NVIDIA Shield), a release window ("by the end of June") and a price tag ($350). That's a full $100 more than the PlayStation Vita -- arguably the most competent competition for Shield's hardcore skewing demographic -- and even a smidgen over the cost of various full-on game consoles. Despite the high barrier to entry, NVIDIA tells us Shield will follow the same annualized model that its mobile phone counterparts do: a new internal upgrade each year to keep up with the times. And we already know what that future looks like. Given all that baggage, we can't help but approach our last hands-on before launch with an eye toward whether or not this is a worthy purchase. Is NVIDIA's Shield worth getting in on early?

Gallery: NVIDIA Shield (Hands-on final)

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Mobile, NVIDIA

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Gaming’s New Frontiers liveblog

Posted on 17/03/2013 by Jon Fingas

Want to know what the future of gaming will be? Odds are that the panel we're hosting now at Engadget Expand has the answer. Our very own Ben Gilbert is sitting down with NVIDIA Product Marketing VP Ujesh Desai, Oculus VR Product VP Nate Mitchell and Razer Systems Product Group VP John Wilson to see their latest hardware and how it will impact the way we play. Hop past the break for a vision of gaming's new frontiers as it unfolds.

March 17, 2013 5:30 PM EDT

Follow all of Engadget's Expand coverage live from San Francisco right here!

Filed under: Gaming, NVIDIA

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Project Shield’s origins and rapid prototyping detailed by NVIDIA

Posted on 30/01/2013 by Ben Gilbert

We got our first look at Project Shield -- the NVIDIA-built gaming handheld -- during CES 2013, where the company surprised everyone with the previously unheard of device. It's essentially the marriage of an Xbox 360-style GamePad to a 5-inch screen, all powered by NVIDIA's brand new Tegra 4 mobile CPU. But the device's origins aren't quite as glamorous as its form, even in prototype stage. "The first prototype, assembled in early 2012, was little more than a game controller fastened to a smartphone with wood," reads NVIDIA's boldly worded blog post detailing the history of Project Shield. That initial prototype saw heavy iteration across 2012, eventually culminating in the device unveiled last month.

However, just 10 days prior, the device was still locked away in NVIDIA's Silicon Valley development offices, shrouded in secrecy. Even the models we eventually tried out were what NVIDIA reps repeatedly referred to as, "a project, not a product." To take the device from prototype to production, NVIDIA's modeling assembly on work its lead engineers did by hand just before CES. "Over the holiday break, NVIDIA's engineers took over a small piece of floor space at a Silicon Valley contract manufacturer to assemble the units that would be shown off at CES," the piece says. Of course, NVIDIA's engineers won't be hand-building the "tens of thousands more units" that arrive later this year -- a team of "quick-turn manufacturing specialists" at NVIDIA is handling that. We assume the former group will be catching up on much needed sleep.

[Photo credit: NVIDIA]

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, NVIDIA

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Source: NVIDIA

CES 2013: Gaming roundup

Posted on 14/01/2013 by Ben Gilbert

Ultra High Definition TV and -- surprisingly -- gaming took the spotlight at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. Who'da thunk it? Certainly not me, Engadget's resident gaming dude. But here we are, with NVIDIA's first game console, Razer's modular PC rig, Valve's Steambox prototypes and Xi3's first example of third-party, Valve-backed Steambox hardware and, and ... maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's look back to January 3rd, before NVIDIA's press conference, before Razer's Project Fiona unveiling and before Valve surprised us with hardware prototypes. Those were simpler times -- times when Valve hadn't yet launched its multi-front attack on what we're still calling console gaming. It seemed unlikely that we'd see such a concerted effort to move PC games from the exclusionary world of desks and home offices into living rooms this early in the year. Yet, again, here we are.

Continue reading CES 2013: Gaming roundup

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Tablets, HD

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Project Shield won’t be sold at a loss, says NVIDIA

Posted on 08/01/2013 by Sean Buckley

NVIDIA's Tegra 4 powered handheld looks a lot like a typical game console, but it isn't. You could say that its operating system sets it apart, or its knack for streaming PC games, but that's not it -- it's that Shield won't be sold at a loss. Although many consumer game devices eventually turn a profit, they often hit the market as a loss leader, herding gamers into a closed ecosystem and securing a revenue stream for the manufacturer -- every Nintendo, Xbox or PlayStation game made funnels a small licensing fee to the owner of the platform. NVIDIA, on the other hand, isn't a game company, it's a hardware manufacturer. "We'll make our money by selling the device to gamers," NVIDIA stated on the company blog, explaining how Sony and Nintendo do business. "This time-honored approach isn't one we're taking with Project Shield... ...our goal with it is to design and sell a truly great piece of hardware, one that fits comfortably in your hand, delights your eyes and blows out your ears." NVIDIA's still dancing around the subject of price, of course, but the message is clear: Shield is probably going to hit your pocketbook more like a tablet than a portable games console.

Filed under: Cameras

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Source: NVIDIA

Hands-on with NVIDIA’s first game console, Project Shield (update: now with video!)

Posted on 07/01/2013 by Ben Gilbert

NVIDIA surprised the world last night by transitioning from hardware component manufacturer to game console manufacturer in one fell swoop, introducing the world to its portable game console, Project Shield. A 5-inch "retinal" HD multitouch display sitting atop a full-on game controller that resembles a blend of the Xbox 360 gamepad's curves and the PlayStation 3 DualShock 3's unfortunate analog stick placement, all powered by the newly revealed Tegra 4 quad-core cortex A15 processor. The console's set to ship in Q2 2013, and it promises stunning graphics for the Android games it's made to run, as well as a direct streaming option employing NVIDIA's GeForce Experience application. That means not just Android games, but also full-on PC games, with built-in Steam Big Picture Mode integration. It is, frankly, an impressive package. But the proof's in the pudding, right?

We got our first chance to go hands-on with the device this morning -- our first hands-on with any Tegra 4 device, mind you -- and came away impressed. Beyond being a speedy handheld, the 5-inch LED makes high-def PC games look even more visually stunning. Sheer pixel density alone meant that our test run of Need for Speed: Most Wanted looked even better on Project Shield than it did on the PC running it. More importantly, there was zero perceptible lag.

As for controls, Shield is a bit on the unwieldy side of things. In an effort to make the screen foldable, clamshell-style, with the full gamepad underneath, the analog sticks are sunk into the body. While it didn't make any of the games we tried unplayable, it did feel a bit less comfy than, say, an Xbox 360 controller. The DualShock 3-esque placement of those analog sticks isn't helping either, but sadly that doesn't look like it's changing -- the sticks are where they are for function's sake.

Gallery: NVIDIA Project SHIELD hands-on

Continue reading Hands-on with NVIDIA's first game console, Project Shield (update: now with video!)

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, HD, Mobile, NVIDIA

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NVIDIA unveils Project Shield, a Tegra 4-powered Android gaming handheld

Posted on 07/01/2013 by Ben Gilbert

A video shown on-stage during NVIDIA's press conference just unveiled "Project Shield," a gaming controller / portable console running the just announced Tegra 4. The controller looks an awful lot like a PlayStation 3 DualShock 3, albeit with an HD screen attached. NVIDIA's promising 38 hours of gaming out of the 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.

NVIDIA's hoping Shield will replace your average controller as well -- perhaps with that newly detailed Grid system? -- and company CEO Jen-Hsun Huang showed off its use in-tandem with a swanky LG 4K television on-stage, navigating through media without pause. He also gave us a taste of a few games running on it (Blood Sword: Sword of Ruin and a boxing title) via NVIDIA's Tegrazone gaming store. But beyond just Android games we've already seen, still-in-development Unreal Engine 3 title Hawken was also given a multiplayer run, and looked notably more attractive than the previous two titles.

As good as the handheld's newfangled Tegra 4 chip seems to be, it still can't hold a candle to Nvidia's own GTX 680 -- Huang explained that the Shield can play more than just Tegrazone games -- it can take over your gaming PC, too. He explained that Nvidia's GeForce Experience software can pipe PC gaming to the handheld over your local network, giving Shield owners access to their Steam library (navigatable by Big Picture Mode, of course) directly from the device. It looks like users will be able to purchase PC games through Tegrazone, too.

Huang showed the crowd Need for Speed: Most Wanted running in real-time on the device. It's ... well, it's really impressive. There's little (if any) perceptible lag, and this is a racing game we're seeing (as in that lag really matters). The next game up is Assassin's Creed 3, which looks similarly impressive on the Shield's 5-inch screen. Finally, we're seeing Steam launched directly from Tegrazone, and it launches directly into Big Picture Mode. Beyond just playing games via streaming, it looks like we'll be able to buy them directly on Steam, through Shield. We'll be getting a closer look at Project Shield later this week, and we'll be sure to put it through its paces. Oh, and we'll ask for a price and release window, as we've yet to hear official word on either. Can't wait? Tide yourself over with NVIDIA's official press release after the break.

Update 2: NVIDIA tells us Project Shield's roughly in the beta stage of development, and currently doesn't include an LTE radio (WiFi only). It's running Jelly Bean at the moment, but may change by the time it's expected to ship, in "Q2 2013." Still no word on pricing, sadly.

Gallery: NVIDIA Project Shield