Nvidia has Revealed the $199, 4K Capable, Android-Based Shield Console

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It seems like everyone wants to have their own game console these days. Nvidia has revealed tonight at this year’s Game Developer’s Conference a new entry in the console wars, in the form of the Nvidia Shield console.

Featured above, the new console will be another one of their Shield offerings, running on Android, and being capable of 4K playback. The machine, which will be bundled with the Shield Controller, will retail for $199.


Nvidia CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, enumerated at the unveiling why he hopes consumers will be excited: “First, it’s based on the most popular OS in the world. Second, the richness of the Google Play store, with its huge range of applications. Third, it syncs with all my other devices. Finally, it has an incredible voice search capability.”

Nvidia is poising the device as a set-top box and gaming console, powered by a Tegra X1 processor, which has a very capable 256-bit Maxwell GPU with 3GB of on-board memory. The Shield offers 10-bit processing; will be able to handle 4K, 60Hz video “very soon”; and it’s even able to tie into your library of movies via the Android TV functionality.

“What we need is a great store,” Huang continued. “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.”

You can play both locally installed games, as well as games streamed entirely from another new announcement, the Nvidia Grid subscription service, which lets you stream games at a 1080p resolution and 60FPS. At launch, enthusiasts can expect at least 50 games to be available to purchase.

Some of these games include the likes of the original Portal, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, The Talos Principle, The Witcher 2, Metro Last Light Redux, and even Ultra Street Fighter 4.

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