Nvidia waves 4King big Android Shield at games console warzone Nvidia is tossing its hat into the already crowded home console market with an Android-powered gaming device - the Shield. The GPU giant said its new Shield box can stream telly online and games from Nv's Grid service, or play downloaded titles. The console will ship in May with a starting price tag of $199, we're told, and 50 …
As Nvidia will soon find out, it's for no one. They have some blue sky estimates in their PR release saying that the Grid streaming service can provide top tier games with a latency of 150ms. In the digital audio world, we call that kind of latency a "mushy keyboard" because you can definitely feel the delay. On top of that, no one is going to get latency that low in the real world. It will be more like 300 - 500ms or as high as a half second, which will just be unplayable.
...So the top tier games will be a bust, leaving the Android games which I could just as easily play on my tablet. And I can stream video on my Roku for $35, so that's out.
In essence, yawn. next.
"What do you mean? You can use PS3 and PS4 controllers on Android devices."
Last I checked, not without some fiddling, compatibility is not guaranteed, plus if you don't have a Sony phone, you have to pay for the Sixaxis interface app (and it only works on rooted phones). You tend to have better luck with Wiimotes or a dedicated gamepad (they make Bluetooth gamepads with built-in cradles for your phone, and they're not too expensive, either).
I don't think the OS is the biggest problem here. It's the RAM or lack thereof. Besides I'd wager SteamOS' desktop requires more memory than Android TV. No the problem is the amount of hardware they can provide at that price point just isn't enough.
I'm not quite sure what valve is doing with the SteamOS after announcing their own streaming boxes.
This is likely more expensive than the other 4k Android competition while providing local game support that will always be mediocre at best even before considering GPU muscle. The problem is the 3Gb of ram. I'm assuming that this is a shared system/vram setup. Meaning OS/Game/VRAM all have to fit within 3Gb. This might be seen as plenty as of the last console generation but the current gen is at 8Gb shared memory. So at best this thing will be able to handle ports of Xbox360 and PS3 games (and older PC games). The next deficiency is the amount of storage - 16 Gb. Sure you can add more but I don't think throwing additional money at this thing is the smart thing to do considering the competition.
This is no where near the "best thing to happen to gaming".
As far as the streaming service goes I'm not sure how it differs compared to what is available on their shield tablets. Seems more convenient to cast the stream from your tablet than this thing. That is of course ignoring latency issues.
Jack of all trades and master of none. In trying to be the one device that rules them all it feels like it fails to deliver anything but a higher price tag.
About this whole gaming on phone-based hardware thing... it confuses me. Not because I don't think that ARM+GPU can handle it, but because companies have been a it slow to pick it up.
Apple have talked up their Metal API (and it seems to share features with AMD's Mantle and Khronos' GLNext) yet they only made an MFi controller spec a couple of years back, let alone released a gamepad to shake up 3rd party vendors.
Sony have dabbled in the Android gaming space, but they limited the devices it would run on - so the critical mass of developers and users was never reached. Sony have released Android phones and tablets that work with PS3/4 controllers 'out of the box', but that functionality has been ported to other vendor's devices- and as a recent Reg review of an Android console suggests, support for game controllers in Android games isn't universal.
Android consoles... good for emulators!
Sod it. I have a Samsung Tab 10.1 Tegra.... the only time I've used it in the last year was a lost weekend playing Dune II (1992).
My Sony phone supports USB OTG, so I've tried an XBOX 360 controller with a Megadrive/Genesis emulator playing Virtua Racing.... Wow, bitmapped polygons don't seem as impressive as they did twenty years ago.
AC - cos I'm drunk.
I bought one two months ago and love it. It runs KODI flawlessly and I use it for IPTV as well. The gaming experience is fair, it doesn't shape up so well against the PS4 but my 5 year old loves a lot of the games and the remote with headphone jack and voice search is ace! All in all it is a bit pricey but it's a fine bit of kit.
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