Shield Yourselves

One final post on CES for this week, but it’s about one of the very first products to be revealed. I really had to mull this over and work out exactly what I think about this piece of hardware, and yes... I found something good to say about it, sort of. So here we go, my thoughts on Nvidia’s Project Shield.

The Shield is essentially a souped-up android device, running Nvidia’s new Tegra 4 processor. It features a 5 inch, 720p display, and a very... very familiar game pad, all wrapped up in a nifty clamshell design. Let me start on the design, this thing is sexy, it’s like a 360 controller and a F-117 Nighthawk had very awkwardly positioned love and made a babby. For a controller it doesn’t look like there’s too much extra bulk, even though this is much more than a controller, and as pretty much anything else, yeah... there’s too much bulk. This thing is not pocket sized although it is marketed as portable, but practical is something we’ll have to see about, I’ll get to that later.


Now about the specs. Nvidia is kitting this thing out with it’s new Tegra 4 processor. This thing is six times faster than the Tegra 3 which will be inside the upcoming Ouya console. Basically this thing is top of the line, easily capable of HD, and easily capable of pushing it’s display onto a HD TV through the mini HDMI port on the back. Much like the rest of the Tegra line, battery power is likely to be an issue, these things are not the most efficient at conserving power, which hurt a lot of the Tegra 3 phone sales. It’s also not cool if the main purpose of the Shield is gaming, and intense gaming. It may struggle to hold onto it’s portability if it’s constantly tethered to a wall-wart.

The Shield runs the latest version of Android, clean with no added overlays or shells, which is a curious addition. This means that the shield will be capable of playing every game released on Android so far, including any games released for the Ouya. It will also be able to run android apps however how useful a games console with a calendar is will be up for debate. It’s also been announced that there are games in development that have been made with the Shield in mind. I’m going to hold out judgement until we see more about these, but so far I can’t see anything to get excited about.

The shield also has the added advantage of being able to play most Windows games, provided you have the right setup. Essentially if you have one of the better Nvidia graphics cards, and a good enough processor, you’ll be able to stream games from your PC to the Shield over wifi. This is nothing new, it’s kind of like a WiiU crossed with OnLive. Essentially you can piggyback your PC’s extra power to play triple-a titles on the go... except you can’t because this feature only works over wifi, and this cuts right to the heart of the problem I have with the Shield.

It’s a sizeable issue, firstly that portable gaming is a really tough market to satisfy, I’ve touched on this before, and secondly that the Shield isn’t really portable. It’s too bulky to carry around, it’s battery is very limited, the games you’d want to play you can’t past the front porch, and the games it supports under it's own steam are already on your phone/tablet/Ouya. The times the Shield does have a use there are so many things that have it covered. Literally the only use I can possibly think of is gaming on the can, or shirking your family round the dinner table. This links back to my thought on portable game consoles, and how with phones becoming ever more powerful, they really need to justify their existence. I just don’t think the Shield does that. It’s got some good features, but those alone can’t justify the price point.

Pretty much like everything I’ve seen this week, my opinions are based on what we know right now. Meaning if you disagree with them, tough because we’re probably both wrong. To be fair I hope I’m wrong, I’d like to be pleasantly surprised by everything. I like surprises, and it’s their scarcity that makes me grumpy... grumpy and often right.
Jamie out xoxoxo