Now that we have a neat little showing of the new gaming handheld by NVIDIA which is currently being called "Project Shield", what is everyone's impressions of it? What do you hope that it becomes? As of this first posting, it was just shown at CES 2013, and we all know how items can see drastic changes from the CES showing to the time it gets to that store shelf or Amazon shopping cart.
So far it appears to be a Xbox 360 like controller with the PS3 layout (which I personally prefer) and a clamshell design with a 5'' folding 720p LCD screen. IT had WiFi, BT, Micro HDMI out, 3.5mm audio out, Micro USB, and a Micro SD card slot. All great ideas, and I hope that all of those options stay. Of course the biggest thing about the hardware of the device is that it is also running the new Tegra 4 chip.
The device is running a vanilla JellyBean Android OS as of right now and appears to run any app that a phone or tablet can run which is great. The device is made to play any android game with the controller, but also can connect over local WiFi (unfortunately, LAN only at this time) and play your PC games from your Steam account. The video shows him playing Black Ops II and the same image and sound over the PC in the corner which he is streaming from.
Not sure how OnLive works with it yet, but they may want to look into a marketing deal with them as well.
My personal Hopes for the device are:
- Integrate Steam into it as much as possible, I am a big Steam fan and would love to be as portable with my PC games as possible.
- That if streaming over LAN from your PC, that you can "Hide" the gameplay on the main computer and allow the PC to just stream it straight to the device in the background without the PC being tied up with the gameplay.
- If possible, have the streaming ability over the internet. I know that is much to ask and doubtful, but hell, this is my wishlist. It would be even great if it could play my Steam games directly off of the device, but I am a realist.
- A Miracast like option for a wireless way to connect to a television.
- A sub $100 price point. Once again, I do not know the cost of making a device like this, and unlike console makers who make all of there money from the content they sell and loose money on the hardware, I am sure NVIDIA is still in the business of making money and the content for this device is from other companies, but hopefully the price will not be so high that no one will buy it.
What does everyone else want to see in a portable Android gaming device?
First Hands On video:
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