nVidia Project Th-.. Shield (Tegra4)

From Nvidia pov it could be sort of marketing coup as Silent Buddha states, they developped the tech.
They could produce the thing in tiny quantity, sellng it with comfortable margins to a handfew of geeks/technophiles and be done with it.

Still, Valve, Nvidia, what next? I feel like it is getting less and less clear if the Ps4/720 will go undisputed during their lifetime, if they plan for a long cycle as this gen I would put the odds even lower.
 
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha


Did Sony pay Nvidia to make the Vita look good by comparison?
??? sorry but putting aside content, I don't see how this is less tempting by self than a PSV.
Possibly superior hardware at least as good, standard sd card slots, most likely better controls, better battery life, more solid (as the in the DS the screen is protected by design), etc.

It is not tempting for others reasons imo, mostly the lack of content for core gamers.
Ok the device is bulky, but I would not put a psv either in my pocket.

I think that Nintendo has the best design since the DS, it is pretty simple but allow for a reliable design that doesn't extra protection.

Looking at the PSV or "that" I feel like both are too big for pocket anyway, so once that it taken in account I don't get why they stick to pretty tiny screens...
Some people in R&D department seems to have a tough time moving forward. people are buying tablets by wagons and they think that for some reason people when it comes to games are willing to stick at max with 5' screens, Archos has been more forward looking on the matter imo.
 
An hand on of the device from pCperspective:
Pretty beefy amount of memory, 2GB.

One thing I did not think of if is that Nvidia if that device has some success /doesn't lose money can release another version next year and so on.
 
Those are all cool projects. But they have a big downside and that is you are stuck playing the games with the awful touch screen controls.
Nope. You can do exactly the same thing as what the Shield does. Stream the game to your phone/tablet and then pair a wireless xbox 360 controller to your PC and control the games with that. The tablet/phone is just a dumb terminal window.

With Kainy you can also attach the xbox 360 controller directly to the phone/tablet and map all of the controller's buttons as you desire. There are plenty of built in profiles for popular games.


PC Minecraft streamed from PC running on tablet controlled with xbox 360 controller.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRyX_yF9suM
 
An hand on of the device from pCperspective:
Pretty beefy amount of memory, 2GB.

One thing I did not think of if is that Nvidia if that device has some success /doesn't lose money can release another version next year and so on.

Things I took from that video:

- Battery life while streaming from the PC is 20 (twenty) hours
- Real Boxing, when connected to a TV through HDMI, renders different views for the TV and the shield's screen. Wii U functionality in there already.
 
nVidia doesn't need to sell a heap of these to be successful. For every one of these devices they sell they will probably sell a high end GPU to the same person. Besides this is probably more than just their handheld, it is also probably their stab at doing something like Gaikai/Onlive and they make the hardware to stream the games too.
 
Nope. You can do exactly the same thing as what the Shield does. Stream the game to your phone/tablet and then pair a wireless xbox 360 controller to your PC and control the games with that. The tablet/phone is just a dumb terminal window.

With Kainy you can also attach the xbox 360 controller directly to the phone/tablet and map all of the controller's buttons as you desire. There are plenty of built in profiles for popular games.


PC Minecraft streamed from PC running on tablet controlled with xbox 360 controller.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRyX_yF9suM

But with the Shield you don't need to go that extra step. You already have the controller in your hand. No need to fiddle with extra cabling, find and pairing a compatible controller etc.

It's everything those systems provide but in one tidy package. And with the Tegra 4 being (on paper) quite a beast, you're probably going to get top notch GFX in the near future. Especially if Nvidia has some success with this enterprise.
 
This horrendous looking thing is stillborn for sure but it's a step in the right direction. I've been musing over an HTPC setup for a while now but streaming from my desktop now sounds like a far better option.

nVidia is onto something with cloud gaming but they need to bring the cloud home. The killer feature here is streaming PC games to your TV. The other missing piece is passing KB/mouse/gamepad inputs back to the computer.

IOGear and Asus already have products that do both. There won't be real progress though until industry standards are in place for wireless video streaming with graphics IHV support for real-time H.26x encoding.
 
If a Nexus 7 sells for $200, a Nexus 4 sells for $300 and a Nexus 10 sells for $400, why would this ever sell for $450 or more?

Unless nVidia has delusions of grandeur and Jen Hsun Huang woke up thinking he's Tim Cook, there's no way this is going to cost more than $350, and I'm rooting for sub-$300.

Just out of curiousity I went looking at those various devices.

Nexus 7
-----
Tegra 3 - so a cheaper slower chip.
1 GB of RAM.
much lower PPI screen.
small battery.
Likely being subsidized (sold at or below cost).

Nexus 4 [edit - fixed, had specs for Nexus S 4G previously)
-----
Quad core Krait - so much slower.
high PPI screen
2GB of RAM.
Tiny battery.
Nothing there other than the screen and memory amount are really comparable to the nVidia Shield.

Nexus 10
----
Exynos 5250 - finally getting to similar performance ballpark at least.
2 GB of RAM, so matches up better.
Decent battery size, probably similar to what will go into the NV console.
High PPI screen.
This is the closest in cost you'll probably find as long as we ignore the rest. The hardware also has to fit into a potentially smaller but bulkier form factor. Whether that will end up helping with the cost is hard to say. So at this point it is quite likely that the minimum price is going to be around 450-750+ USD (cheapest Nexus 10 in the US is 489 USD that I've seen from a casual search).

All of the above have
----
No hardware controllers.
No pivoting screen.
No hardware buttons.
No support for 4k (beefier HDMI solution, implies a significantly stronger GPU, etc.)
Any of the additional hardware and tech that Nvidia has hinted at but not disclosed as of yet.

There is also a good chance that any "Google" branded devices are getting a bit of subsidy from Google as they can then recoup those through app store sales, something nVidia is unlikely to be able to do.

They are also unlikely to sell this anywhere near cost. Unless pressed into a corner (ala Radeon 4870 price war) they always build hefty and healthy margins into their products.

So, thank you. After your post and looking at the state of Android devices, I think it's pretty safe to say that it'll likely be somewhere between 450-800 USD or more. And I'd be hugely surprised if it came in closer to 450 than 800.

Regards,
SB
 
Where are you getting your Nexus 4 specs? It has 2gb RAM and a quad core Snapdragon SoC. And the screen is 1280*768.
 
But with the Shield you don't need to go that extra step. You already have the controller in your hand. No need to fiddle with extra cabling, find and pairing a compatible controller etc.

It's everything those systems provide but in one tidy package. And with the Tegra 4 being (on paper) quite a beast, you're probably going to get top notch GFX in the near future. Especially if Nvidia has some success with this enterprise.

if this is going to be hundreds of dollars + the need for a beefy gpu in your desktop to stream a pc game whats the point ? You can invest that money in a good laptop and get a better game experience.


I can already take my surface and hook my 360 controller to it and play games. When the surface pro comes out I can do the same but play things like batman aa and other things. Sure it might not give the same experience as a gtx 6x0 series but it will still be fast
 
eastmen said:
I don't see the point of this. I guess its nice to play android games with dedicated controllers, but why ?
I think Nvidia probably sees it two ways: a showcase platform for Tegra, and an if you build it they (developers) will come device.

Currently, you have: Wii < PSV < Tegra 4 < PS360

Late 2014/2015 you will have WiiU < Tegra 5 < PS4

Sure, it is ugly as sin, but it is recognizable (original Xbox comes to mind) and apparently quite comfortable despite appearances otherwise.
 
Just out of curiousity I went looking at those various devices.

Nexus 7
-----
Tegra 3 - so a cheaper slower chip.
1 GB of RAM.
much lower PPI screen.

Nexus 10
(cheapest Nexus 10 in the US is 489 USD that I've seen from a casual search).

All of the above have
----
No hardware controllers.
No pivoting screen.
No hardware buttons.
No support for 4k (beefier HDMI solution, implies a significantly stronger GPU, etc.)
Any of the additional hardware and tech that Nvidia has hinted at but not disclosed as of yet.

Tegra 3 is the same size as Tegra 4, it was on 40nm, Tegra 4 is on 28nm.
5" 720p display is not that special anymore and likely not too expensive. Smartphones are starting to have 1080p on that size.

Official price for the 16GB Nexus 10 is $399. That "No" list is basically a joke if you try to imply high costs.

So, thank you. After your post and looking at the state of Android devices, I think it's pretty safe to say that it'll likely be somewhere between 450-800 USD or more. And I'd be hugely surprised if it came in closer to 450 than 800.

Regards,
SB

That range is crazy and not to mention quite vast. The device is basically a 360 controller with 5" screen, Tegra 4, big battery and 2GB of RAM and you'd be "hugely surprised" if it only costs $125 more than a new 10" iPad...Ok. (625$ is the average of 800 and 450)

It's a portable game console and for example Wii U has more stuff in it than this. Now I don't expect it to be as cheap as Vita is, but I'd guess something like a 349-399$. It depends how many they want to sell.
 
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Nexus devices, just like the Amazon Kindle fire tablets are anomolys regarding retail pricing, as these are products produced by companies who own and operate their content distribution platforms through which pretty much the prevailing majority of apps and software content purchased for the device will be pruchased from. Google and Amazon have adopted an effective traditional "console" model, i.e. selling a device with really low margins to undercut the competition, whilst making a killing back on content purchases through the storefronts, i.e. Google Play store for Google and Amazon Kindle and appstore for Amazon.

Nvidia doesn't even remotely have anything of that ilk, and would be wasting their time and money trying to develop one for themselves. Thus I think it's a little silly to look at any Nexus device pricing or Kindle tablet, as this thing will be more in line with the iPads and Samsung Galaxy tablets of the world than the Google Nexus devices.

It's a niche product for high end PC Gamers who have more money than sense and run triple GTX 680 SLI rigs with intel Xeon core CPUs @ 5Ghz with 32GB ram, just cuz they can. This won't be a mainstream product, and certainly won't have a mainstream price. Nvidia will slap on a nice healthly margin, because... well... they don't give their graphics cards away for free do they?
 
That's not entirely true. the Nexus devices are made by Samsung and ASUS - they are still going to have to be paid by Google. Hence if ASUS and make a Nexus 7 for $200 and sell it to Google for $200 making a profit, for Google to sell it on, then another company (nVidia) could also potentially make the same device for the same price, broadly speaking (obviously engineering is a corporate capability which some will be better at than others).

Also, nVidia does have something of that ilk in the Tegra store, and promoting their Tegra platform has wider benefits.

It's perhaps more pertinent to compare the Shield to Vita regards cost, price and features.
 
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