NVIDIA Project SHIELD Hands On Video Demo from CES 2013

NVIDIA made some serious noise and surprised just about everyone in attendance a couple of days before the official opening of this year's Consumer Electronics Show, with the company’s official unveiling of its next-gen Tegra 4 SoC and a portable gaming device, code-named "Project SHIELD."

We posted details regarding Tegra 4 and SHIELD late Sunday night and we’d suggest checking out this post for some additional information, photos, and specifications.  Today we got a chance to see SHEILD up-close and personal in a closed-door meeting with some representatives from NVIDIA. Take a look...


Although it’s easy to categorize Project SHIELD as a portable gaming system, which it is obviously, it’s not right to pigeonhole the device as such because it’s capable of much more than running games. At its heart, SHIELD is a Tegra 4-powered portable Android device with a 5” touch-screen, running a pure version of Jelly Bean, and can run virtually any app or game available in the Google Play Store. The device’s streaming capabilities, however, open up a world of other possibilities and use cases.


In addition to running Android apps and games, SHIELD can also stream content across a local area network from a GeForce GTX-powered Windows PC with very low latency. That’s a boon for PC gamers who may want to do some fragging on a large screen TV, but it will also be useful for streaming videos or other media from a PC. Although we don’t have any official confirmation of this, the screen on SHIELD may even be used for additional content or perhaps as a companion display, while the large screen is displaying content. There are a number of interesting possibilities to say the least.

During our private demo, we were able to work with SHIELD and get a feel for the device briefly and think gamers will be pleased. It’s too early to draw and solid conclusion from the pre-production sample we held, but SHIELD felt solid and as comfortable as any other game controller we’ve used previously. Although there was a cable hanging out the back, it seemed well balanced too.

We’re sure there’s a lot more the Project SHIELD story we’ll be able to tell you in the coming months. For now, enjoy our video demo and stay tuned to HH for more from CES 2013.