Cloud gaming has been promised as the panacea for all of gamers’ and the games industry’s ills for years now. Yet it has never quite delivered on its promise. That is, until NVIDIA launched its new NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV device in the US and Canada on May 28th, showing us all how it’s done!
Aside from the fact that the SHIELD lets you download tons of great games (more on which, below) and watch your favorite movies and TV shows in eye-poppingly gorgeous 4K resolution, the real tech cherry on the cake here for many gamers who want instant access to a huge library of games is the fact that it gives you access via your television to NVIDIA's cloud-based gaming service, GRID.
Aside from the fact that the SHIELD lets you download tons of great games (more on which, below) and watch your favorite movies and TV shows in eye-poppingly gorgeous 4K resolution, the real tech cherry on the cake here for many gamers who want instant access to a huge library of games is the fact that it gives you access via your television to NVIDIA's cloud-based gaming service, GRID.
NVIDIA (accurately) describes the GRID experience as being akin to having access to a gaming supercomputer in the cloud. In practical terms, this means that you can play some of the best games ever developed, without having to bother with all the fuss of going to an old-fashioned bricks ‘n’ mortar game store to buy a disc (remember those?!) or having to sit around while you wait for a large game file to download onto your system.
GRID’s library of great games is growing fast and already includes numerous critically acclaimed titles. Just select what you want to play and the game is streamed immediately to your TV in up to a full glorious 1080p at a super-smooth 60 frames per second. It’s the dream that millions of gamers have had for years (and the promise that the industry has been tantalising us with) come true!
The fact that the SHIELD is a mere $199 is nothing less than amazing, when you also consider the PC game streaming feature, which allows hardened PC gaming fans to stream their favorite titles from their GeForce GTX graphics card-powered gaming rig immediately in up to full 1080p HD straight to a TV in the house. This is done quickly and easily using NVIDIA’s GameStream tech, which works like a dream with over 200 top PC titles already.
And if all of that didn’t convince you that the SHIELD is surely an essential purchase for any self-respecting gamer this summer, bear in mind that you can hook up a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse for a traditional control set-up (ideal for games such as World of Warcraft, League of Legends, and DOTA 2). And then also consider that this beautifully-designed machine will also let you download and play some of the most powerful, critically-acclaimed games of all time on your TV, including Game of Thrones HD, Doom 3: BFG Edition, The Talos Principle, War Thunder, and soon, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Battle of Sol, Q.U.B.E. Director's Cut, Brawl, Burn Zombie Burn, Exiles, Funk of Titans, BeatBuddy, Frozen Synapse Prime and many more.
GRID’s library of great games is growing fast and already includes numerous critically acclaimed titles. Just select what you want to play and the game is streamed immediately to your TV in up to a full glorious 1080p at a super-smooth 60 frames per second. It’s the dream that millions of gamers have had for years (and the promise that the industry has been tantalising us with) come true!
The fact that the SHIELD is a mere $199 is nothing less than amazing, when you also consider the PC game streaming feature, which allows hardened PC gaming fans to stream their favorite titles from their GeForce GTX graphics card-powered gaming rig immediately in up to full 1080p HD straight to a TV in the house. This is done quickly and easily using NVIDIA’s GameStream tech, which works like a dream with over 200 top PC titles already.
And if all of that didn’t convince you that the SHIELD is surely an essential purchase for any self-respecting gamer this summer, bear in mind that you can hook up a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse for a traditional control set-up (ideal for games such as World of Warcraft, League of Legends, and DOTA 2). And then also consider that this beautifully-designed machine will also let you download and play some of the most powerful, critically-acclaimed games of all time on your TV, including Game of Thrones HD, Doom 3: BFG Edition, The Talos Principle, War Thunder, and soon, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Battle of Sol, Q.U.B.E. Director's Cut, Brawl, Burn Zombie Burn, Exiles, Funk of Titans, BeatBuddy, Frozen Synapse Prime and many more.
The NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV is, to put it simply, the best $199 you can possibly spend on any digital entertainment tech in 2015.
