Nvidia has unveiled their impressive new Nvidia Shield in their Made To Game GDC 2015 Keynote. The new Shield is a 4K capable Android console for only $ 200.
Nvidia did their homework with the 3rd iteration of the Shield, and so this console is not only capable of playing Android games, but AAA console games, such as Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Crysis 3, and Doom 3: BFG Edition. Note that these are full digital downloads, that play natively in an Android microconsole.
Nvidia’s secret? The powerful Tegra X1, which ably matches up to the capabilities of 7th generation consoles. We really should have seen this coming, considering Nvidia shared a Face Works demo that they revealed they could run on a SOC as well as one of their high-end graphics cards.
Obviously, Nvidia also cashed in chips with their game developer partners, as they got these devs to publish these PC/console games to Android. 50 games will be available to download at launch, to expand to 100 in the coming months. Most games will default to 1080p, 60FPS performance wise.
There is a GRID game streaming service on top of this, with both all-you-can-play subscriptions and game purchases/ rentals options. This is where you will be able to play 8th generation games such as The Witcher 3 and Batman: Arkham Knight. Jen-Hsun even brought out a CD Projekt RED dev who admitted to be skeptical that it would work until he saw it.
Just to prove that Nvidia is serious about gaming, the Shield is coming bundled with the game controller.
The Nvidia shield console will be available in May. You can watch the full keynote below.