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Android games, game streaming, Netflix, and mo'
Nvidia unveiled the next step on its road to dominating PC gaming and possibly your living room today with the announcement of an Android-based game console simply dubbed the Shield. This asymmetric, die-cast 23-ounce black aluminum slab is about the size of a home network router and positioned as "the world's first Android 4K TV," and priced at $199, including an Xbox-like gamepad, and is scheduled to drop in early May.
Nvidia walked us through the media streaming services first. Like an Apple TV, the Shield has its own movie and TV streaming ecosystem, which the device can display at 4K out of the box. Nvidia also integrates profile pages for actors as well as films, so you get a direct list of all the movies and shows that they've been in.
Streaming music and browsing photo galleries was also in the mix, but it wasn't clear if these other two services were plugging into Spotify or Google Play, or coming straight from Nvidia. Either way, the interface indicated icons for Netflix, Youtube, and other streaming stuff. Like the Roku, you can talk into the remote to use voice search instead of wrangling with a virtual keyboard. The remote is also rechargeable by USB, so battery juggling isn't needed either. The gamepad also has a mic for voice-activated controls.
Of course, there was more on tap than a media streaming device. Nvidia integrated the Tegra X1 chip, which marries an ARM CPU to the company's Maxwell GPU, cramming in 256 shader cores. For reference, a GeForce GTX 960 has 1,024 shader cores, so there's still a gap between this and a full-fledged desktop video card. But Nvidia pitches the X1 as being more powerful than an Xbox 360, while drawing a fraction of the wattage (5-20 watts, to be exact). The 3GB of system RAM in the Shield also dwarfs the 512MB in the 360. Nvidia intends to have over 50 games available at launch, and 100 by the end of this year. The split between streaming games and locally played games wasn't clear, though.
For connectivity, we've got gigabit Ethernet, dual-band 802.11ac wifi, 4.1 Bluetooth/BLE, two USB 3.0 ports, micro-USB, and HDMI 2.0
You can pay a flat-rate monthly subscription for part of the library, and pay a one-time fee for additional newer and shiny games such as Batman: Arkham Knight, The Witcher 3, and Shadow of Mordor (all three of which were already present in the Shield store interface and waiting for your hard-earned cash). They showed a live demo of the racing game Grid 2, run on a remote server and played locally, without noticeable lag or frame drops, at 1080p and 60 frames per second. Resident Evil 2 was also along for the streaming ride, looking sharp and smooth. Speaking of the Witcher 3, its senior game designer Damien Monnier stepped into the spotlight and showed off the game streaming live.
You may recall that a company called OnLive tried streaming games over the Internet a few years ago, but it eventually had to drop that idea because it couldn't get enough takers -- but it did not offer a flat-rate sub, and it looks like Nvidia has figured out a lot of issues with network latency. Some customers also took issue with OnLive's pricing model, which required standard retail prices despite you not really owning the game in the traditional sense. Judging by the prices we saw in the Shield game store, there will be no discounts here either. Nvidia's service, dubbed Grid, has actually been available for some time via previous Shield devices, but this was the frist time that we'd seen day-one releases available for purchase.
The company brought Gearbox Software president Randy Pitchford on stage to talk more about the gaming aspect. He announced that Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel was coming to the Shield, which they demonstrated running on the console itself, at what they claimed was 30 FPS. He expected performance to improve during the course of development. Next on board was Croteam, known for their Serious Sam games. They ran a live demo of their "third-person puzzer" The Talos Principle, which looked a bit smoother. Neither title had a specific release date.
Contestant #3 was Tim Willits, the studio director for id Software, the gang made famous by Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. He brandished the Doom 3 BFG Edition, which includes the expansion plus the original Doom 1 and 2 for good measure. He said it was the only official Android version of the package. Doom 3 came out ten years ago, so it's not as demanding as the other two and ran at a steady 60 FPS, though the studio has made some visual enhancements.
But can it run Crysis? Sure, an old joke by now, but one Nvidia took seriously, whipping out Crysis 3 complete with multiplayer, running on the actual Shield and not streaming over GRID. It was just a 1v1 match, but still pretty impressive visually. Especially for a $199 box. The retail packaging also indicated "16GB" on the side, which we took to mean the available storage space. That seems pretty low for a console-caliber gaming platform. An Nvidia rep later told us that the device could connect to an external USB drive or an SD card, but only for media storage. Shields with larger capacities are on the horizon, but we couldn't get a specific timeframe.
Company CEO Jensen Huang said that they intended to get the user's GRID streaming wait time down to one minute, vastly cutting down on the amount of data that needed to be downloaded before you could begin playing. On the cloud end, this is made possible by rendering on Nvidia's "GTX Supercomputer," which sends its bits to Amazon's AWS delivery network, who then sends the stream to you. Huang claimed that the total transit time from the supercomputer to your TV could be as low as 150ms, "half the blink of an eye."
We'll be talking to Nvidia at GDC, so keep your eyes peeled for more juicy details.
More...
Nvidia unveiled the next step on its road to dominating PC gaming and possibly your living room today with the announcement of an Android-based game console simply dubbed the Shield. This asymmetric, die-cast 23-ounce black aluminum slab is about the size of a home network router and positioned as "the world's first Android 4K TV," and priced at $199, including an Xbox-like gamepad, and is scheduled to drop in early May.
Nvidia walked us through the media streaming services first. Like an Apple TV, the Shield has its own movie and TV streaming ecosystem, which the device can display at 4K out of the box. Nvidia also integrates profile pages for actors as well as films, so you get a direct list of all the movies and shows that they've been in.
Streaming music and browsing photo galleries was also in the mix, but it wasn't clear if these other two services were plugging into Spotify or Google Play, or coming straight from Nvidia. Either way, the interface indicated icons for Netflix, Youtube, and other streaming stuff. Like the Roku, you can talk into the remote to use voice search instead of wrangling with a virtual keyboard. The remote is also rechargeable by USB, so battery juggling isn't needed either. The gamepad also has a mic for voice-activated controls.
Of course, there was more on tap than a media streaming device. Nvidia integrated the Tegra X1 chip, which marries an ARM CPU to the company's Maxwell GPU, cramming in 256 shader cores. For reference, a GeForce GTX 960 has 1,024 shader cores, so there's still a gap between this and a full-fledged desktop video card. But Nvidia pitches the X1 as being more powerful than an Xbox 360, while drawing a fraction of the wattage (5-20 watts, to be exact). The 3GB of system RAM in the Shield also dwarfs the 512MB in the 360. Nvidia intends to have over 50 games available at launch, and 100 by the end of this year. The split between streaming games and locally played games wasn't clear, though.
For connectivity, we've got gigabit Ethernet, dual-band 802.11ac wifi, 4.1 Bluetooth/BLE, two USB 3.0 ports, micro-USB, and HDMI 2.0
You can pay a flat-rate monthly subscription for part of the library, and pay a one-time fee for additional newer and shiny games such as Batman: Arkham Knight, The Witcher 3, and Shadow of Mordor (all three of which were already present in the Shield store interface and waiting for your hard-earned cash). They showed a live demo of the racing game Grid 2, run on a remote server and played locally, without noticeable lag or frame drops, at 1080p and 60 frames per second. Resident Evil 2 was also along for the streaming ride, looking sharp and smooth. Speaking of the Witcher 3, its senior game designer Damien Monnier stepped into the spotlight and showed off the game streaming live.
You may recall that a company called OnLive tried streaming games over the Internet a few years ago, but it eventually had to drop that idea because it couldn't get enough takers -- but it did not offer a flat-rate sub, and it looks like Nvidia has figured out a lot of issues with network latency. Some customers also took issue with OnLive's pricing model, which required standard retail prices despite you not really owning the game in the traditional sense. Judging by the prices we saw in the Shield game store, there will be no discounts here either. Nvidia's service, dubbed Grid, has actually been available for some time via previous Shield devices, but this was the frist time that we'd seen day-one releases available for purchase.
The company brought Gearbox Software president Randy Pitchford on stage to talk more about the gaming aspect. He announced that Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel was coming to the Shield, which they demonstrated running on the console itself, at what they claimed was 30 FPS. He expected performance to improve during the course of development. Next on board was Croteam, known for their Serious Sam games. They ran a live demo of their "third-person puzzer" The Talos Principle, which looked a bit smoother. Neither title had a specific release date.
Contestant #3 was Tim Willits, the studio director for id Software, the gang made famous by Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. He brandished the Doom 3 BFG Edition, which includes the expansion plus the original Doom 1 and 2 for good measure. He said it was the only official Android version of the package. Doom 3 came out ten years ago, so it's not as demanding as the other two and ran at a steady 60 FPS, though the studio has made some visual enhancements.
But can it run Crysis? Sure, an old joke by now, but one Nvidia took seriously, whipping out Crysis 3 complete with multiplayer, running on the actual Shield and not streaming over GRID. It was just a 1v1 match, but still pretty impressive visually. Especially for a $199 box. The retail packaging also indicated "16GB" on the side, which we took to mean the available storage space. That seems pretty low for a console-caliber gaming platform. An Nvidia rep later told us that the device could connect to an external USB drive or an SD card, but only for media storage. Shields with larger capacities are on the horizon, but we couldn't get a specific timeframe.
Company CEO Jensen Huang said that they intended to get the user's GRID streaming wait time down to one minute, vastly cutting down on the amount of data that needed to be downloaded before you could begin playing. On the cloud end, this is made possible by rendering on Nvidia's "GTX Supercomputer," which sends its bits to Amazon's AWS delivery network, who then sends the stream to you. Huang claimed that the total transit time from the supercomputer to your TV could be as low as 150ms, "half the blink of an eye."
We'll be talking to Nvidia at GDC, so keep your eyes peeled for more juicy details.
More...