back to article Nvidia takes fight to Sony, Nintendo with Android handheld console

Nvidia’s Project Shield seems positively daft at first thought. Who in their right mind would launch a new handheld gaming device today? If Sony and Nintendo can’t win over the millions of folk who play games on phones and tablets with their dedicated gaming handhelds - and very strong gaming brands - how the heck can a …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Andrew Moore

    Pity...

    ...it looks absolute pants.

    1. Greg J Preece

      Re: Pity...

      A reason would be nice.

      I actually really like the design. By emulating a standard controller they've basically got spot-on ergonomic design, which the PSP had a problem with, and Nintendo never bothered with (seriously, the ergonomics on the DS range are hideous). And the battery life does sound superior to its peers.

      The library of games is the real problem; the vast majority of the games on the Play store are pretty shit. Some indie ports have made it to Android, such as the Introversion stuff, but that's still not enough, especially when the Vita lets you play Uncharted.

      1. Lamont Cranston

        Greg,

        it looks like a compact (y'know, mirror, foundation and a puff; women's stuff). Maybe a sign that gaming is no longer a male-dominated field, but still...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Greg,

          Maybe a sign that gaming is no longer a male-dominated field, but still...

          ... its not pink

      2. Joe K
        Headmaster

        Re: Pity...

        The reason is to try and flog Tegra 4 and new Nvidia GFX cards, nothing else.

        They'll lock this shit down, and make out like streaming is amazing super tech, conveniently forgetting that you can do this on current tablets with Splashtop2 for precisely no money at all.

        I use my Nexus 7 to streamplay games from my PC with no issues at all. PS3 controller can still connect to the PC through a few walls, though mouse controlled turn-based games work much better.

        Never being separated from Civ 5 or XCOM is one hell of a time-burner.

    2. Dave 150

      Re: Pity...

      Can I just have the quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 board out of it please?

      1. Argh

        Re: Pity...

        I'm pretty sure that Tegra 4 will come to quite a wide range of tablets and phones, as Tegra 3 did.

  2. jason 7
    Meh

    Well when you've been dumped by everyone else...

    ...what do you do?

    Only trouble for Nvidia is next to zero market and brand awareness with the general population who might buy this stuff.

    "Nvidia? Who are they? Do they make cheap tablets or willy pills or something?"

    Yes PC gamers I hate to break it to you but you are a very small (but vocal) minority.

    We'll see this time next year.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Well when you've been dumped by everyone else...

      nvidia dumped by everyone? really? since when?

      Didnt realise that tegra3/4 were out of date and no one was using them anymore.

      1. jason 7

        Re: Well when you've been dumped by everyone else...

        Consoles dear boy, consoles.

        1. Dave 126

          Re: Well when you've been dumped by everyone else...

          Just yesterday, I was reading Tomshardware's appraisal of Tegra 3- in short, it aids stability but doesn't really do anything the higher-end ARM devices can't do- so hopefully for nVidia Tegra 4 will raise the bar.

      2. kb
        Alert

        Re: Well when you've been dumped by everyone else...

        One of the big money makers has been the consoles and except for the Steambox which we haven't heard the specs of yet the big three, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are ALL using AMD for their next gen consoles. The PS4 will have an AMD APU covering CPU and GPU, the Xbox Next will have a PPC with an AMD GPU, and the Wii-U has the equivalent of an HD4670 last I heard, so Nvidia is pretty much trapped in PC gamer land for the most part.

        Sure there are some takers for Tegra but since you can get a broadcom HD chip for dirt cheap and more people play videos than games on their tablets its gonna be a pretty small niche. as a PC gamer I can tell you that most of us are buying less cards simply because the consoles hamstring the graphics, heck I'm still running an HD4850 which still plays all the games at native res and with plenty of bling. I'm gonna get an HD6850 not because I need it but because its my BDay in a couple of months and the HD68xx use less power, but frankly I don't NEED the card to play all the latest games like Borderlands 2 with full bling and talking to customers that game they are telling me the same thing, they are using 2+ year old GPUs because they see no point in upgrading.

        So yeah Nvidia is in a bad way right now. and its obvious that AMD buying ATI was a smart move as when the previous CEO fired all the engineers and bet the farm on netburst...err I mean Bulldozer its the ATI division that is gonna keep the cash rolling for the next couple of years and having 3 major consoles is gonna be a heck of a nice earner, and with both the X360 and Wii having ATI as well as long as those units are still sold that's more money for AMD, less for Nvidia. So while I don't really have a horse in the console race I have to say I probably wouldn't buy Nvidia stock right now, looks like they are gonna be in for a lean patch.

    2. localzuk Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Re: Well when you've been dumped by everyone else...

      PC game sales were massively up earlier in 2012, compared with a drop in console game sales. (The numbers I saw were 230% increase for PC games, 38% drop for console games).

      So, PC Games are not a very small minority, and never were. They are a major market that generates billions in sales every year.

    3. Levente Szileszky
      Thumb Up

      Re: Well when you've been dumped by everyone else...

      Well said, Jason, well said - they have revenue but it's far from future-proof.

      Nvidia was left out in the cold both by MSFT and Sony, both next-gen console will come with AMD (formerly known as ATI) GPU inside, some maybe even with AMD CPU, taking pretty much all available chip money from the ginormous console market.

      Nvidia has no x86 license so he cannot make integrated/Fusion (CPU+GPU) desktop chips like AMD and Intel (though Intel's GPU totally design sucks, even after sinking billions in their abandoned Larrabee project which they are trying to recoup somehow with their new x86-based compute card.)

      Nvidia's Tegra design is comparable to Qualcomm's omnipresent, more powerful yet less energy-hungry Snapdragon SoC but still falls short in almost everything eg a current-gen Snapdragon S4 dual-core handily beats a current-gen quad-core Tegra 3 (and it's more than ironic that Snapdragon-family's integrated GPU, called Adreno, was built on ATI's Imageon chipset, later sold to Qualcomm... Adreno -> Radeon, got it, right? :P)

      Nvidia's only flourishing business is their traditional desktop/WS market where CUDA is unbeatable - partly thanks to AMD's incompetent, lousy OpenCL support; I've talked to ISVs in the past few months and more than one openly said they will drop OpenCL thus AMD's computing support completely in 2013H1 unless AMD revamps their professional driver development and provides them proper support, in a timely fashion.

      NV needs a breakout point and it's nice to see JHH is trying to do something but outside of hardcore mobile gamers this inbred console-gnome is pretty much DoA, I think.

      1. Argh

        Re: Well when you've been dumped by everyone else...

        The Snapdragon chipset may well be better, but there aren't any/many games that take advantage of the GPU on Android, unlike the Tegra 3 enhanced exclusives.

        I realise that general software will be able to use the better CPU, but there is very little on phones/tablets besides benchmarking tools that shows an appreciable difference in the number crunching.

        1. Lunatik

          Re: Well when you've been dumped by everyone else...

          "Enhanced" would be one word, "weighted for" would be another. Well, two actually.

          I don't expect for a minute that any Tegra 3-optimised versions on TegraZone are 'better' for it, just that Nvidia will have guided the dev's hands when choosing which bits to spice up (the bits the T3 can do well) and which bits should be toned down (the areas where it sucks, and this is likely where more effort was expended to ensure high frame rates).

          My old Matrox Mystaque came with 'optimised' versions of games. They sucked ass, but this was highly appropriate as the video card did too.

          Nvidia has a history of hyping their SoCs up to the nth degree, backed with glitzy demo vids, only to launch an underwhelming product. I see little to suggest that Tegra 4 will be any different and the Adrenos and Malis of this world will continue to run rings around it it many critical departments

  3. Himalayaman
    FAIL

    A joke?

    Wow... they paid somebody to design this?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A joke?

      Nah, they requested submissions from some teenage lads... the kind who, whilst sat in the back of maths class, draw cars with rockets fins on them.

      It does look a little 'Alienware', doesn't it?

      1. NumptyScrub

        Re: A joke?

        quote: "Wow... they paid somebody to design this?"

        "Nah, they requested submissions from some teenage lads... the kind who, whilst sat in the back of maths class, draw cars with rockets fins on them."

        To be fair, the MS XBox controllers have been some of the most comfortable I've used, and this looks suspiciously like them. For controllers, you need to get the ergonomics right if you're expecting them to be used for any length of time; avoiding RSI is important enough that comfort >> pretty.

        I'll reserve judgement until I actually get to hold one; if it isn't comfortable then I wouldn't buy it at any price, if it is comfortable (and usable) I may well be tempted, depending on the price point.

  4. leon stok
    Paris Hilton

    Content

    For the last few years, consoles have been all about the exclusive content.

    If you don't control the content, it is a race to the bottom where specs to don't really matter, if you're ending up playing the latest generic Android game.

    Couple that with an eco-system where most games are either free or selling for a few dollar, it will be very hard to make the money a modern AAA game costs. (Then again, maybe I have too much faith in some companies that they won't finance one platform with sales from 'the big 3' console vendors)

    Then again if they are going for the casual market, this is not the device for it. That market has been taken over by the mobile phone.

    So where Valve has the content and the distribution platform (which might make it a credible platform) I don't see this device going anywhere.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's a shame that nobody makes games for the Vita - it's a wonderful piece of gadgetry lovely to hold, nice feel, pretty screen, really a great piece of kit. But since it launched there have only been a handful of games and almost none taking advantage of its key feature - the duel analogue sticks.

    There are more games in Japan but they made it a complete pig to change between profiles which is, once again, a shame.

    All in all the best game on the Vita is Gravity Rush and it's one of the best games I've played in a long time.

    As to this thing, I suspect the same will happen to it as all the other hand held consoles.

    It's a shame because playing games on touch screens is awful, well any game that requires d-pad/analogue sticks, because the degree of control you have is terrible and it really starts to hurt - even games like final fantasy seem to strain in odd ways.

    Oh well.

    1. Dave 126

      A shame maybe, but Sony never appeared to have the critical mass / virtuous spiral of users and developers. Were Sony to aim for the far more modest goal of making an Android gamepad, and certified 3rd party phones and tablets, they would be on to something. They would have a smaller slice of a bigger pie.

      As it is, the Xperia S is compatible with some Sony games on the Android Play store, but my Xperia P isn't.

      It was mentioned in passing (in the Lego LOTR game review) but gaming-mouse maker SteelSeries has made a game controller aimed at mobile devices. Unlike this nVidia unit, they seem to have considered the way it would be slipped into bags thus and removed awkward protruding parts.

  6. MJI Silver badge

    Looks odd, and bulky

    Prefer my small handheld console with Unit 13 and Uncharted Golden Abbyss, that is pocketable.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Den..

    I'm out.

  8. Thomas 4
    IT Angle

    Undecided

    Like many other folks, the aesthetics don't really hold much appeal for me.

    That said, the ergonomics of this thing could be a very different kettle of fish. I played on a 3DS and found the controls immensely uncomfortable, having rather large hands. Even the PSP didn't get it quite right. A full size X-box control I can use comfortably for several hours of gaming. Maybe it's not something you'd play on the way to work but it'd be ideal for playing on holiday. The screen size should be larger than that of a PSP or 3DS as well.

    As always the two things that are going to make or break this are the actual games available - the Xperia Play languishes in my cupboard due to a lack of decent titles - and pricing as well. If the price isn't on a par with either the 3DS XL or PS Vita, this thing will be dead in the water.

    By the by, wasn't Razer working on something like this, or was it something else with a screen? Can't remember.

    EDIT: Just thought of something else. The PC Streaming feature would be a very nice touch for me - playing Dark Souls & Witcher 2 while laying in bed or even in the tub (with caution ofc) sounds like a might appealing idea, especially considering how heavy my last laptop was.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Undecided

      "full size X-box control"?

      Well, no such thing as an X-box, but talking about full size and Xbox makes me think of The Duke, the original Xbox controller that you could probably use as a mace to beat a man to death with. Excellent piece of gear.

      1. Thomas 4

        Re: Undecided

        All good IT hardware should be capable of inflicting horrible injury.

  9. Jello
    Thumb Up

    Firstly, sorry I haven't had time to read the entire article, but the second thing I thought of when I saw the image.. (the first was "great, I hope this turns out to be a decent gaming device"), anyway, the second thing was hopefully they will do a deal with OnLIVE to give access to the OnLIVE games catalogue, presuming it has WiFi built in.

    I think whether you like OnLIVE or not, a gaming controller with a built in screen that can play android games and some of the latest PC titles can't be a bad thing surely...

    Cheers

    Jello

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Aren't Onlive pretty much dead in the water as a distribution platform now since the buyout / layoffs chaos?

    2. Argh

      It runs stock Android. You can get an OnLive client for Android, although obviously you'll need to pay for the service.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    First thing I thought when I saw it...

    ...wrist strain! The way you hold a TV gaming console handset is different to the way you hold a dedicated handheld (Vita, DS etc..). With a TV console handset your eyes/head is looking up at the TV and your hands naturally drop down. However, if you use the same TV handset form factor and just plonk a screen on it, your hands/head/eyes aren't in the correct position. Sony/Nintendo spent mega $$$'s figuring this shit out, Nvidia seemed to have forgotton all about this and focused on the internals. Still, as the article mentions it might be subject to change.

  11. wurdsmiff
    Thumb Up

    I would actually buy this

    The concept of this appeals to me, price permitting. I see it as a way to emulate the Wii U's screen independence, but with Steam's game library.

    For context, I have an HTPC hooked up to my TV, that I also use as a Steam-based 'console'. A device like this would allow me to play the games I have in the comfort of the living room while the missus watches 'OMG THEY LET THE STUPID MAN PLAN THE WEDDING' and 'CHILD HAS A HORRIBLE DISFIGUREMENT BUT GETS TREATMENT TO LOOK LESS UGLY SO IT'S OK TO WATCH THIS'

    The device specific games are of less interest, but I'd expect more indie games to come to android now the platform is expanding.

    My 2p

  12. Dave Bell

    This depends on the ideas it inspires

    My PC has an HDMI output, so I could connect it to a stonking big TV. And this gadget is a controller with a small screen.

    Keep the game on the computer, and use the small controller screen for info about the game. You could have an ammo counter and health indicator for a first-person shooter. If the controller's motion/position sensing is good enough, it could act as the handlebars and instruments of a racing motorbike. And because it can be programmed, you can do such things without having to transfer a lot of data. The game just has to signal the engine speed, and this thing does the work of generating the rev-counter display.

    1. Lunatik

      Re: This depends on the ideas it inspires

      A Nintendo engineer travelled through time from 2010 and read your post.

      Two years later, et voilà! - the Wii U Gamepad.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    seems like a great idea

    but then I remember that xbox type controls are simply not the best way to play either FPS, or racing games ... in fact they're not very good for much!

    1. MJI Silver badge

      Re: seems like a great idea

      Best FPS controller on a console is Playstation Move.

  14. MJI Silver badge

    PC vs Console arguments

    Will you stop this silliness?

    You are allowed both, you are allowed to play exclusives on the platforms.

    They are all games.

    It is supposed to be fun.

    PCs are not going away. Consoles are still producing good games.

    You know what?

    While online gaming on PS3 I don't think "the graphics are poor aghhhh" I just think where is the enemy and I have fun, So it is 1280x720 - looks OK, there are particle effects, animated maps, things changing, 24 people, up to 4 aerial bots, 8 turrets, a few other bots, jetpacks, exos, what would better graphics bring? (and why did I use the game which showed up Crytek over Crysis 2 console).

    I can happily sit at the PC for an hour and play a Half Life game or ME1.

    Just stop argueing and enjoy the games.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like