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If you didn’t read our LG Optimus 2X Review, let me get you caught up to speed: it’s the first smartphone to rock a dual core processor. The processor is an NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor and, if you can believe it, the company is already working on a quad core processor that will see the light this year. More cores means faster processing and better load balancing, allowing you to enjoy not only improved performance but more efficiency.
Sounds great overall, but here’s the thing: developers can tweak their code, leverage the nature of multi-core processors, and create games with drastically improved performance. How do you know which games are truly leveraging the dual cores and are worth downloading? Normally there’d be no way to know… but NVIDIA just launched Tegra Zone.
For the most part I HATE when developers/carriers and the like create their own little app store, but in this case I really like the idea. If you’re looking for great games on Android Market, you could easily be overwhelmed. Why not have a portal where NVIDIA can essentially vouch for what’s best, essentially saying “This is an awesome game that best leverages your phone’s hardware.”
Even popular classics like Fruit Ninja have been reworked and optimized especially for use on Android Phones with Tegra 2 processors. Speaking of specific titles, let me name a few that you’ll find in Tegra Zone:
Dungeon Defenders – the first game available for Android built on Unreal Engine 3:
Backbreaker Football THD (btw this game is freaking sweet):
Fruit Ninja THD:
Samurai II:
Hardwood Solitaire IV:
Monster Madness:
Vendetta Online
Galaxy on Fire 2:
If you’ve got a device with a Tegra 2 processor I definitely recommend you download Tegra Zone from Android Market. Rather than downloading games and hoping they work well, you can hit up NVIDIA’s Tegra Zone and know you’re getting a professional, high-end game that is optimized for your device. Just looking at the above titles is a pretty good indication that you’ll be getting great quality.
And what might you get in the future? It’s kind of scary. With NVIDIA’s pace of innovation they’re not being shy about their immediate goals and expectations. They’re intentions are to improve mobile gaming and they want to port the top PC game engines and game titles to Tegra. With how powerful Android Phones are becoming and with different form factors (like the Motorola XOOM which is Tegra powered) the idea that your mobile is less capable than your other devices will likely go the way of the dinosaurs.
Right now Tegra Zone features different games, reviews, high-res screenshots, HD video trailers, gameplay videos, news and more. As I said before, it’s pretty much it’s own little Android Market of Tegra 2 optimized games. I think the app itself could use a few cosmetic changes, but the purpose itself is great. You’ve got a Tegra 2 device and you want games high quality games, right? There’s only one place you need to go.
Go ahead and download Tegra Zone (if you’ve got a Tegra 2 device) and let us know how you like the app itself – and the games it features – in the comments below!
BTW, you don’t buy the games from NVDIA. All the buy links are in Android Market, so NVDIA is basically curating and linking out to the Android Market.
I think it’s a great idea. It’s a nice way for nVidia to spotlight games optimized for the Tegra, and I’m happy that they just link through to the marketplace, and not on a proprietary nVidia market.
How are these on Xoom? It’s one thing to have a good frame rate on a small screen, another on a tablet.
Ohhhh Yaaaaa!!!! iPhone Ports!!!! Complete Garbage!!! BackBreaker 2 has been out for months!!!! Why does anyone care about old games!!!!
This will make my upcoming zoom purchase today less painful
Yay openness.
Any idea if these are games that specifically REQUIRE a Tegra2 chip to work, or are they just “high-end” games that require horsepower on par with Tegra 2… i.e would one be able to play these games on e.g. the Optimus 3D with its TI OMAP 4430 chip once it is released (benchmarks have shown this phone is as fast, if not faster than any Tegra 2 phone currently available) or are these games coded specifically for the Tegra 2?
donnydon – These games are optimized for Tegra 2. The lighting, textures, and physics are vastly improved over the same game on iOS.
funny quote from the Galaxy on Fire forum: “There is thing bothering me… Is Nvidia Tegra really so powerful GPU? Graphics of Galaxy on Fire 2 look uncomparably better than on iphone 4 or even iPad… It is not possible to render textures this quality on Apple devices?”
Quad-core…..drool….
By the time my current contract is up early 2012, Quad core should be the standard. Most definitely looking forward to that!! (maybe even holographic displays) lol
@Donnydon — yes, what JC wrote is correct. The textures and lighting are just unbelievable. you can notice the difference 100%. Google and Nvidia are showing us what portable games should be in 2011
SWEET!!! Downloading tegra zone now! Man i love my XOOM!
toastnjam not holographic but nvidia plans on a 1.2 ghz tegra 2 3D to come out in the fall. Put one of those in a phone with xperia play style controls and you’ll have games that are completely beyond anything on an iphone.
JC i have the ATRIX……..fatures have been ripped out of the ANDROID versions such as online play!!!!!!!!!!
Also if you can tell the difference to make it worth playing an OLD game please let me know….
take away the browser and bug screens android is horrible!!!!!!!!
THEY SHOULD HAVE GAME MARKET FOR EVERY KIND OF PHONE. WILL MAKE IT EASY FOR DEVELOPERS
With the quad core tablet in August, and the quad core smartphone before the Christmas market, 12 gpu cores will be nice. I hope this will be ARM A15 architecture, with Java built in to the microarchitecture. I also hope the 4G ROM I’ve read about in a tablet, could include libre office, it would fly on A15.
@Lars I can download the app for my Incredible so I’m going to assume you don’t have to be equipped with a Tegra 2. I didn’t download any of the apps inside of it though so I could be wrong.
@donnydon if u dont like the atricx take it back and buy a iphone and stop your bitchazz complaining its old already
I think this is a rather smart idea by NVIDIA. It’s very similar to the “Intel Inside” marketing. It’s a good way to help differentiate those products running the Tegra line in mobile devices. . . I’m sure we will soon see a “NVIDIA Inside” or “Tegra Inside” logos on devices.
@tracksforhire
donnydon doesn’t have an Android device. . . he’s most likely one of these iFans trying to spread FUD. Even Joshua Topolsky on engadget loves the Atrix and he’s a big Apple fan. . .
Fruit Ninja? Really?
@Sam: yeah – I didn’t mean the TegraZone app itself – didn’t think there’d be a restriction there – I was talking about the games themselves… Maybe you can download one of the free ones from TegraZone on your Incredible and see what happens.
WOW you can’t slice fruit like that if you have a single core phone, this is magical.
you guys act like idiots…no one said fruit ninja was groundbreaking. the idea is to optimize games, and that includes established games that people have already played. look at vendetta and backbreaker, just from the pictures I can see there is quite a bit of detailing and great texture even in the background. I will wait for a better tablet though, the xoom and ipad2 will be dinosaurs by the fall…the only thing thats innovative about the ipad2 is the cover
Downloading it know… some dumba$$ in the market gave it one star because it force closes on his wildfire… *EYEROLL*
@ari-free — I hate Apple like everyone else but summer is rolling around so I never want to discount them until i see what they come up with in their next iteration.
Every Apple iPhone or iPad owner can play these games. Only a fraction of Android users will be able to say the same because the bulk of Android’s sales are based on low end devices.
This is what happens when you don’t have a baseline standard.