Among a predictable sea of 4K TVs, fitness trackers and connected car tech at CES, Nvidia’s Project Shield turned out to be the show’s biggest surprise. No one expected that the company best known for PC graphics processors — and more recently, mobile chips — would announce its own handheld Android-based gaming system. Suddenly, Nvidia had to juggle a lot more meeting requests with the press, who were eager to try out the new hardware. I was barely able to finagle some hands-on time during my last day at the show. The bulk of Project Shield consists of a full-sized game controller that’s a bit larger than an Xbox 360 gamepad, with Nvidia’s Tegra 4 processor inside. A 5-inch, 720p touch screen folds open from the controller like a clamshell. Although Nvidia’s still working on some aspects of the controller, its dual thumbsticks were smooth and precise even in the prototype I played with. The Tegra 4 chip made mincemeat of the latest Android games, running them at velvety smooth framerates even when outputting video to a television over HDMI. [youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ1-9O8OWZg”%5D Project Shield has another neat trick: If you have a gaming PC running on a newer Nvidia graphics card, the handheld can play those PC games over your home network connection. Think of it like OnLive, but streaming right from your PC instead of from faraway servers. To my surprise, input lag was insignificant in Nvidia’s meeting room as I lined up sniper shots in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Nvidia says it’s all thanks to the work it’s done in its Kepler PC graphics cards, and claims that the latency over an 802.11n router is no worse than that of a wireless game console controller. If you’re into gaming, this might all seem pretty nifty. What’s not to like about the combination of low-priced, low attention span Android games to play on the road, and hardcore PC games to play on your couch or in your bedroom? Well, it turns out that Project Shield has plenty of
↧