NVIDIA takes us behind the scenes on Project SHIELD and how it came to be
We gave you guys a good hands on with NVIDIA’s Project SHIELD back at CES earlier this month and were absolutely smitten with the handheld. The perfect marriage of Android and portable gaming, SHIELD gives us hope that Android will soon be taken very seriously within the gaming world. Today, NVIDIA took to their blog to give SHIELD fans an in-depth back story on exactly how Shield came to be, going into everything from an idea that sparked almost 10 years ago, to its eventual debut at CES 2013.
Initially, SHIELD was nothing more than an Android compatible gaming controller until NVIDIA came up with the crazy idea to slap a screen on it and throw Wayne, their next-gen mobile processor inside (Tegra 4). Android and its open software philosophy is a key component to SHIELD with NVIDIA saying they wanted to avoid “cultivating a walled-garden of proprietary gaming content.” We couldn’t agree more.
“The challenge in the past – with the old model consoles – is software; but thanks to Android we didn’t have to come at it trying to build a walled-garden ecosystem.” – NVIDIA Senior Vice President of Content and Strategy Tony Tamasi.
The blog post also talks about the first 2 final prototypes being brought to NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun on Dec. 18th, only a few short weeks from its CES unveiling. If you want to read more, hit up NVIDIA’s blog post via the link below. There, you can also sign up for email updates on SHIELD, as well as see a behind an early wooden prototype.
[NVIDIA Blog | Project SHIELD Signup Page]