PAX EAST 2013 | NVIDIA Reveals Project SHIELD
Recently I got to do a video interview with the Senior Technical Marketing Analyst of NVIDIA Andrew Coonrad. He showed me their upcoming controller, Project SHIELD, that features a built-on screen, giving you the capabilities of walking away from the computer and enjoying the game in another part of your house without dragging a wire around. Using the video graphics card of NVIDIA this new controller will get those very sweet graphics right in the palms of your hands.
I know in the video it kind of messed up, but the way I see it is that it was working fine and it was doing as advertised. Sometimes things just happen where you get glitches, especially when it isn't a finished product. With how Coonrad handled the issue when it came up, he was cool and calm and collective. I give it to him on that. Currently NVIDIA is working on a launch date for the second quarter of 2013, which will give them a bit more time to fix those final bugs. Believe me, though, when I say that all the times I've gotten NVIDIA for my PC it has always worked out the best. (I've recently been stuck with my laptop with its crappy Intel graphics card. None for nothing, Intel, I love your processors, but leave the graphics cards to NVIDIA.)
The design of the Project SHIELD system is really for those days of being tired of sitting at your desktop computer, whether at home or work. You can step away from the computer, and as long as you have a WI-FI connection in your house and the NVIDIA card in your computer you can access that gaming on the controller. The processor they have on this bad boy is a Custom 72 Core NVIDIA GeForce GPU Quad Core A-15 CPU, which is the big one-two punch to get this sucker up and rolling to bring you the processing of your PC to your hands. Project SHIELD also features a five-inch 720p Retinal multi-touch display, making it capable of playing Android games (since they support the Android Jelly Bean). With giving you the crisp clean graphics and low latency between the computer and controls you'll be able to game out on your favorite PC titles right from the comfort of your couch.
From what I was able to check out with Project SHIELD in person I noticed it had a good weight, fit right in my big man claws very nicely, and it's joysticks and button configurations are pretty awesome and comfortable. I can compare it to a bigger size MOGA controller, but with definitely a better response time. This is how a personal handheld device should be able to play a game. It also doesn't hurt that the graphics look gorgeous on its display. I can seriously say that I never thought in my wildest dreams or lifetime that were going to see this jump in technology to make games look a beautiful as this, but yet again NVIDIA is getting better and better as the years go by. Honestly I cannot wait for Project SHIELD to blow every PC gamer away later this year.
For more information on NVIDIA's Project SHIELD be sure to visit the official website.
Special thanks to Andrew Coonrad and NVIDIA for showing off this great product!
