NVidia Shows Off Mobile Gaming at CES with Project Shield

CES (the Consumer Electronics Show for those who ain’t heard) has officially landed in Las Vegas as of today, so we can expect to see a bunch of cool tech that will shape what’s to come over the course of 2013.  At last year’s CES we saw ultrabooks become the big buzzword, smart TV’s, and on the gaming front saw some cool hardware concepts from Razer in the Fiona gaming tablet and the Razer Blade laptop.  Even Nintendo took the stage in the absence of Sony and Microsoft’s gaming teams to show off the Wii U.

We’re just getting started and now Nvidia’s already gotten into the gaming groove, introducing a portable gaming system into the field of mobile consumer tech.  Called Project Shield, the unit looks like an Xbox controller with a small screen that flips up from it.  It’s complete with analog sticks and a full button configuration, and according to Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, “it’s pure Android.”  The unit is run on an open platform using microSD for memory and standard jacks for other input and output.  Oh, and it’s sporting their quad-core Tegra processor.

If you run an Android device that’s powered by NVidia, you should be familiar with NVidia’s TegraZone gaming.  The Shield is made to work with TegraZone and Android games as far as mobile gaming goes.  And on the PC front, Shield lets you stream games from a PC at your house that’s running a compatible GeForce video card.  Think about the power of Steam for example, unlocked and expanded, able to be played on a portable, not needing the PC itself.  It’s still a prototype but an interesting way for NVidia to branch out with their quad-core Tegra technology.  And the fact that it can run those PC games and support multiplayer with the performance of a GeForce GTX 600 is where this device will show its real strength.

While it’s yet to be seriously tested, the device looks extremely promising with the rich number of features it has, and even adds value to their GeForce graphics cards over AMD/ATI.  I’m really looking forward to see what this bad boy can do.

Check out NVidia’s new Project Shield site to geek out a little more on the features here.

Tushar Nene
Staff Writer
@tusharnene