Add Nvidia to the list of companies that want to rule your living room.
At
the Game Developer’s Conference Tuesday night, the company announced
the Nvidia Shield console, an Android-based set-top box built for
gamers. It’s due out in May for $199.
The
Shield, which is capable of 4K playback and will ship with a game
controller that Nvidia claims has a 40-hour battery life, will be
powered by the company’s flagship Tegra X1 mobile chip. In showcasing
the power of that chip, though, the company didn’t compare it to modern
consoles from Microsoft and Sony, but instead baselined it against the
10-year-old Xbox 360, saying Tegra X1 offered twice the visual
performance.
The
curious comparison was just one of the head-scratching moments of the
lengthy presentation. While Nvidia positioned the Shield as a
revolutionary system powered by a revolutionary cloud streaming service
called Grid, it conveniently ignored the slew of other Android set-top
boxes on the market.
Grid,
the cloud-based streaming service, is an expansion of an existing
service from the company which is presently available to owners of the
Shield handheld gaming system or Shield gaming tablet. (Give the company
credit for one thing: It’s remarkably consistent with its naming
structure, even if that may cause consumer confusion.)
Grid,
which operates similar to Sony’s PlayStation Now, lets players stream
top-tier titles in 1080p at an impressive 60 frames per second. The
initial catalog will consist of 50 games, all of which are either mobile
titles or fairly dated PC games (including Doom 3: BFG Edition and
Half-Life 2: Episode
1).
“100
million people have enjoyed games in that console generation,” said
Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia. “Several billion people
should enjoy them. The question is, how do we get several billion people
to enjoy the 1,000-plus games that were created for this generation?”
Charge
them for it, apparently. The service will offer a subscription model
with two tiers. Basic will offer access to the Grid’s collection of
existing titles, as well as monthly additions. Users who pay for the
premium service will have the opportunity to purchase and play newer
games.
Yes. You’ll have to pay a premium to pay full price for a new PC game.
In
addition to its work as a game system, Shield will also act as a smart
TV peripheral, letting people stream movies, music and apps from the
Google Play service, primarily via voice control.
That’s
all well and good, but the announcement of those features followed a
10-minute presentation by Huang that seemed to underscore why smart TVs
themselves were the future of the home entertainment industry, rather
than peripheral devices.
“Smart
TVs will be the way we enjoy TV in the future,” he said, seemingly
discussing TVs that have the intelligence built in during the
manufacturing process. “These smart TV devices, with applications, will
replace dedicated device over time.”
source: yahoo.com
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