Nvidia announces Shield - portable gaming device

Just for something different, the Consumer Electronics Show opened with an announcement from Nvidia this year. Nvidia - best known for making video cards with decent drivers - revealed a new portable gaming device called "Shield". Powered by Nvidia's newly announced Tegra 4 chip, Shield is an Android device with a five inch touchscreen built onto a controller, with Micro-SD and HDMI ports.




Boring though, right? Android? Who cares if it has a quad-core CPU if it's only going to play flash games and cheap knock offs? Well hold your horses friend and take a look at that picture - that's Borderlands 2 you're looking at. The impressive thing about Shield is that not only can it play Android games, it can also connect wirelessly to your PC, hook up to your Steam account and stream the games directly to the device. We will finally be able to play Dishonored in the bathroom!

Streaming games from your PC to the Shield will require an Nvidia video card, as it will be your PC's video card which handles the majority of the work - it's a Thin client basically, an internet-free alternative to OnLive. Pricing and a release date for Shield are still unknown, or if the current name and design will exist when the device launches, but we'll be sure to let you know when we learn more. What do you think of this new device, are you interested or do you think it looks too odd? Let us know in the comments below!