Nvidia Shield: from Tegra 4 to portable game console – The Verge

Nvidia rolling out cloud gaming for its Shield tablet and console

2014-11-13T09:00:03-05:00

When Nvidia announced the Android-based Shield console, it came with a simple promise: the experience you'd expect on a full-sized gaming machine, shrunk to a 5-inch screen and either powered by the Shield itself or streamed from a home PC. The first effort was promising but rough, and it's spent the past year and a half building on that original idea. In late 2013, it started publicly testing a service called Grid, which allowed Shield owners near its San Jose data center to stream eight games for a couple of hours at a time. For the time, the service worked beautifully, but it was never billed as more than a test, and there was no indicati …

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Nvidia’s Shield console can now stream games over the web

2014-04-07T10:42:39-04:00

Promised two weeks ago and delivered today, Nvidia's big April software update for Shield is highlighted by the introduction of remote game streaming. Until now, the Android-powered handheld was capable of playing graphically intensive games that were being processed by and streamed out of your home PC, but it required that both devices be on the same network. Though still in beta as of now, the remote version of Nvidia's GameStream offers to do the same wherever you are, provided there's a fast enough internet connection. What's more, Nvidia is enabling GameStream from laptops as well, with its latest graphics chips being supported.

Androi …

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Nvidia Shield price drops to $199 alongside new features

2014-03-25T15:00:03-04:00

We've said it before and we'll say it again: though Android may not be a great game platform, Nvidia is trying its damnest to make the platform better. Today, that means a host of new updates for the company's Nvidia Shield portable game console, updating the system to Android 4.4 and adding the ability to stream PC games outside your house - even waking your PC from sleep and letting you remotely log in, presumably after jumping through a few hoops to set up a compatible system.

The other thing that Nvidia's doing today is dropping the price of the Shield to just $199 through the month of April, with no strings attached, quite a dip from t …

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Nvidia could give Shield the power of a gaming PC with Grid streaming technology

2013-12-02T19:34:00-05:00

Nvidia Shield 1024px

About a year and a half ago, the excitement around cloud gaming all but disappeared. Sony bought Gaikai, OnLive collapsed, and Nvidia's GeForce Grid partners failed to materialize in the United States. The idea was that you could give any old smartphone or tablet limitless gaming power by actually running the games on server farms, then stream them like a YouTube video. It seemed like an idea ahead of its time, but it actually worked - and now, Nvidia appears to be testing the waters of cloud gaming once more.

Today, the company launched an extremely limited beta of Nvidia Grid, a new cloud gaming service exclusively for the Shield. It only w …

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Nvidia Shield update lets you stream PC games to your TV in 1080p

2013-12-02T14:05:02-05:00

Nvidia Shield PC games (1024px)

When Nvidia released the October software update for its Shield handheld, it said that the ability to stream PC games at 1080p and 60 frames per second was coming - and now it's finally here. The handheld's December update brings the ability to stream 1080p, 60 fps PC games to your television using the device's console mode and a wired ethernet connection; previously the Shield could only stream PC games at 720p. And a number of big titles already officially support the feature - you can play new releases like Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and Battlefield 4, as well as slightly older titles like Bioshock Infinite and Borderlands 2, while N …

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Black Friday 2013: Nvidia Shield for $249.99 with free carrying case

2013-11-29T14:21:25-05:00

Nvidia Shield hero (1024px)

If the only thing stopping you from purchasing an Nvidia Shield was the Android gaming handheld’s $300 price tag, now is the time to buy. Starting today for Black Friday, and running through Cyber Monday, you can get the powerful portable for just $249.99.

Newegg seems to have the best deal

Newegg, Amazon, GameStop, Best Buy, MicroCenter, NCIX, and Nvidia itself are all running the promotion, which also comes with some extra goodies depending on where you shop. Most online retailers are bundling the Shield with its optional (but very nice) carrying case, which normally retails for $39.99, and many are offering free shipping in the bargain. Newegg arguably offers the best deal, throwing in an official Shield T-shirt and a free two-month subscription to Hulu as well, while Amazon should probably be your last pick: it doesn’t include anything. GameStop, meanwhile, replaces the carrying case with a $25 Google Play gift card.

The Shield isn’t the right handheld for everyone, to be sure. Even though Nvidia has been continually rolling out fixes and new features, you still can’t experience all it has to offer without also owning a gaming PC with a recent GeForce graphics card. Be sure to read our detailed review of the Shield before you decide.

Nvidia Shield update adds key features to the portable game console

2013-10-28T09:00:06-04:00

Nvidia Shield update 1020

Nvidia's Shield just leveled up. Today, the Android gaming handheld is getting a huge over-the-air update that tackles several of the device's biggest problems. First off, the system's getting an update to Android 4.3 with all the little fixes and features that brings. The Shield's GameStream feature is out of beta, and PC streaming is more reliable and seamless than ever before. But third and perhaps more importantly, Nvidia's figured out a way to make loads more Android games compatible with the Shield's integrated joysticks and buttons.

Gamepad Mapper is a new piece of software that lets you map any of the handheld's controls to touchscr …

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What’s inside Nvidia’s Shield gaming handheld?

2013-08-01T08:00:06-04:00

nvidia shield 2 ifixit teardown 1020

How, exactly, did Nvidia manage to cram the guts of a game controller and a smartphone into a portable console? Teardown and repair site iFixit has the answer: it pulled apart the Nvidia Shield to show you the guts of the handheld.

You can see how the cooling system works, pulling air in through the front lip of the device, and using an actual honest-to-goodness fan to exhaust it out the back. iFixit also discovered that quite a bit of room inside the bulky console is devoted to three hefty, cylindrical 18650 lithium-ion batteries. That's a standard, commodity battery type, so you could theoretically replace them with higher capacity cells, …

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Nvidia Shield review

2013-07-31T00:00:10-04:00

Nvidia Shield hero (1024px)

Last summer, I bought an iPad 3. I convinced myself I'd use it for everything: showing off wedding photos, reading all those neglected articles I save to Pocket, and as a second monitor for my laptop.

The only time I actually pick up the iPad, sadly, is to play video games. Perhaps the saddest part is that my iPad isn't a very good game system. It's bulky, the touchscreen controls are pretty crappy for navigating 3D worlds, and the graphics are merely okay. But where "real" game systems like the PlayStation Vita are struggling to build a library of game titles, the iTunes App Store continually tempts me with addictive, artsy new games. I wa …

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Nvidia Shield will ship on July 31st after delay from ‘mechanical issue’

2013-07-21T10:46:19-04:00

nvidia project shield

Nvidia is announcing that its Shield gaming handheld will ship on July 31st, after the release was pushed back due to an unspecified mechanical issue. The Shield, a handheld that plays Android games and can stream PC games from Steam, was originally due out on June 27th - but problems with a third-party component forced Nvidia to delay its release. Nvidia still hasn't said what caused the issue, but with a new release date the company appears to have sorted out the problem.

"We want to thank you for your patience and for sticking with us through the shipment delay of your Shield," Nvidia wrote in an email today to those who already placed a …

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