Nvidia

Nvidia is a company best known for its components -- high-powered graphics cards, the Tegra systems-on-a-chip for mobile devices, even the occasional motherboard chipset. It's increasingly pushing itself as a manufacturer of end user consumer products though, and is now targeting the living room with the announcement of a powerful home console.

Revealed at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the Nvidia Shield -- or SHIELD, as it's stylised -- is a fair beast of a machine. It's based around a Tegra X1 chip boasting a 256-core Maxwell graphics processor unit (GPU) with 3GB RAM, can output in 4K, and has support for high resolution audio. It has built-in WiFi, an infra-red receiver, and can even capture gameplay, promising 60fps quality. Oh, and it all runs on Android.


The OS betrays the Tegra's mobile roots, as does the Shield only having 16GB of onboard storage. However, it makes up for this in two ways. One is expandable storage, with both USB 3.0 ports for external drives and a MicroSD slot supporting up to 128GB cards.

The other is a push towards cloud gaming, with Nvidia's Grid streaming service built in.

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Nvidia

Nvidia claims 200 titles will be available at launch, and pleasantly not all of these are up-converts of phone games. Quite the opposite in fact, with the company promising the likes of


Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Crysis 3, and

Metal Gear Solid: Revengeance. Admittedly, none of these are exactly cutting edge, and only Borderlands was released in the last year, but they're relatively demanding titles yet will run natively on Android. Grid streaming titles are set to be a bit more impressive, with Nvidia taking advantage of scalable processing power in the cloud and offering up the likes of the

Batman: Arkham series, plus recent releases such as

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Dying Light, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, and

The Witcher III.

The console is also set to include TV and media functions. Netflix and YouTube are already on board, and any purchases made on Google Play transfer to the device. Nvidia describes the Shield as "the first streaming device built to handle 4K digital media, hustling video onto next-gen TVs at up to 60 frames per second." "Shield will change the way we enjoy digital entertainment at home," Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia's president and CEO, said during the GDC reveal. "It's an incredibly powerful, efficient and advanced living room entertainment device. It's the best Android TV experience. And it can transform into a serious gaming machine.

It's made to game."


The device itself is pretty sleek, too. Measuring in at 210mm wide, 130mm high, and a positively svelte 25mm deep, it only weighs 654g. It also comes with a dedicated controller, striking as a hybrid of Xbox One's and PS4's -- symmetrical thumbsticks as with the latter, an overall shape and button layout closer to the former -- and a remote control with built-in microphone is available to better utilise its TV features.

The trend towards high powered Android consoles is gathering pace. The announcement of the Shield follows last month's news that the Chinese Obox is coming to the UK in 2016. Nvidia produced the GPU on the original Xbox and the PlayStation 3, giving the company a fair amount of experience in the home console market, while the success of its mobile technology allows it great understanding of changing gaming habits.

The Shield is due to launch in the US in May, priced at $199 (£130). Nvidia representatives have told WIRED.co.uk that the device will launch in the UK in the second half of 2015, with pricing to be announced.