Hasta La Gadget!

OUYA and NVIDIA have a kind of love thing going on right now. The $99 Android-powered game console designed by Yves Béhar’s fuseproject is powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 — this much we already know. What we didn’t know is that the folks at OUYA are working directly with a team of folks at NVIDIA on the project, and that NVIDIA is helping the company to max out its Tegra 3 processor for use on a console rather than a mobile (no battery dependency means the little chip can go much further than usual).

“The partner that we’ve worked the most with, that is incredibly supportive of developers, NVIDIA, they have multiple people on their team dedicated to our account,” OUYA CEO Julie Uhrman told is in a recent interview. She was responding to a question regarding partnerships the company’s forged to make OUYA a reality, such as the aforementioned involvement with Béhar’s fuseproject studio. Despite the OUYA running Google’s mobile OS, Uhrman said, “We haven’t worked very much with Google.” As for NVIDIA, however, the American chipmaker is going all in, helping the OUYA to be the, “best Tegra 3 device on the market,” according to Uhrman.

That praise isn’t all one-sided, of course; NVIDIA had praise to heap as well. “We have a dedicated team working with OUYA to ensure that Tegra 3’s performance is being maximized. They’ve been amazing to work with,” NVIDIA senior VP of Content and Technology Tony Tamasi told us. “The rich catalog of optimized and differentiated TegraZone games — along with the work being done with developers — ensures a flourishing ecosystem is in place and continues to grow.” That support is unlikely to end with this year’s OUYA. Uhrman said her company’s console, unlike the big three console manufacturers, will launch anew annually, following the mobile model. And that model means beefier internals, such as NVIDIA’s Tegra 4, announced just over a month ago at CES. In so many words, we very much expect NVIDIA and OUYA’s lovefest to continue.

Filed under: Gaming, HD, NVIDIA

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Today the folks at NVIDIA are once again showing off the PC-streaming prowess of their Project SHIELD device with none other than the game Need For Speed: Most Wanted. It’s not often that a game with this much heavy-duty need for graphics backup is seen on a device smaller than a desktop computer – but here it is, in full-on instant-gratification streaming action from the comfort of your couch. Project SHIELD is a device that will soon be delivered by NVIDIA to a retail store near you – at the moment it’s still in production.

The NVIDIA Project SHIELD device you’re seeing here consists of an amalgamation of gaming excellence, including soft plastic grips, a lovely high definition display, and an NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor under the hood. The whole device runs with Android for high-powered mobile games and has the ability to stream games from a computer in your home network wirelessly – GeForce GTX to the rescue!

This is just one of several games that’ll be optimized for play between your NVIDIA GeForce-toting computer and Project SHIELD. While thus far NVIDIA has been focusing on games that can be streamed via Valve’s Steam, today the focus is EA Games. The connection today is made with Need For Speed: Most Wanted, but as our NVIDIA host reminds us, Battlefield 3 will also work right out of the box. Each of these games works with a pre-set mapping of controls to the NVIDIA Project SHIELD device, allowing you to jump right in without a hiccup.

With Project SHIELD packed with an NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor, you know you’ve got an undeniable 72-core GPU under the hood. When you’re working with a game streamed from your PC, you’re also using the graphics processing power of your GeForce GPU. In this case the computer does “all the heavy lifting” as NVIDIA’s Will Park notes, allowing you to work with the game at its full-on usability and graphics potential.

Have a peek at the timeline below for additional insight into this beast of a device and gaming environment as it all unfolds through the future – right here on SlashGear. Along with it, be sure to head to our NVIDIA Tegra hub for more Tegra than your eyes can handle!

NVIDIA Project SHIELD demoes PC-bound Need For Speed: Most Wanted is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We saw NVIDIA’s Project SHIELD for the first time back at CES 2013 early last month, where we got our hands on the device. The Tegra 4-sporting device combines the best of Android, large displays, PC gaming, and NVIDIA’s processor. Today the company released a demo of the device running Vivid Game’s Real Boxing, a game built to take advantage of its powerhouse hardware.

Real Boxing has been built from the ground up specifically to take advantage of the Shield’s quad-core Tegra 4 processor and 72-core GeForce GPU. According to NVIDIA, users get higher poly count and animations, true depth of field, and enhanced textures. The game is played out in career mode, with several different boxers to choose from. You can check out the game play in the video below.

There are a total of 20 opponents to fight against, each one of them designed with their own fighting styles, strengths, and weakness. The boxers were modeled after real boxers to give the game realistic movements. The character gamers choose can be customized via mini games that earn points and take the gamer through various bought of training, such as heavy bag work and speed bag sessions.

This is the first of weekly Android Thursday demos, which complement its PC Monday videos, which started earlier this month. On February 4, we saw Borderlands 2 demoed on the device via live streaming from a PC over an ordinary wifi network as the first of its Project SHIELD PC Mondays video series.

[via NVIDIA]

NVIDIA Project SHIELD demoes high-powered Android game Real Boxing is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

With the ASUS-made Google Nexus 7 still selling like hotcakes here several months after its initial debut, a second “bargain basement” device appearing this week shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. This device goes by the code name ME371MG and comes with Intel inside instead of the NVIDIA Tegra 3 that comes with the Nexus 7. This means in this case that you’ll be seeing a budget-friendly solution without a doubt, processor first.

In this case a single core really isn’t going to be much compared to the four (plus 1) cores you’ll get with the Tegra 3 on the Nexus 7. The Intel Atom Z2420 single-core processor has been tipped as running in this tablet somewhere between 1 and 2GHz clock speed. This processor exists thus far only in rather inexpensive devices made with low-cost parts in mind – and benchmarks have shown the processor to be nothing compared to multi-core processors across the board.

This tablet will be working with a 7-inch display with IPS LCD technology and a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. Inside you’ll find 1GB of RAM with options for for 8, 16, or 32GB of internal storage. This tablet will also come with a microSD card slot for memory expansion as well as Android 4.1 Jelly Bean right out of the box.

With a 3 megapixel camera on the back and a 1.2 megapixel camera on the front, this device will be ready for a market release across the world soon, but such “bonuses” above the Nexus 7 won’t be enough to keep the first of two ASUS tablets at bay. If this is an attempt by ASUS to out-do the Google Nexus counterpart to this tablet, they’ve not done their job very well.

If on the other hand they’re able to release this device for half the price of the Nexus 7, minds may change rather quickly. Stay tuned for more information on this “aluminum housed” tablet coming in rather rapidly!

[via Tablets BG]

ASUS “ultra-budget” tablet leaked: Nexus 7 redux is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week the folks at NVIDIA have unleashed a new demo video depicting their Project SHIELD mobile gaming device playing none other than Borderlands 2. The reason this is a monstrous feat, for those of you that don’t know, is the fact that this game is a high-powered PC game that otherwise only exists on the most fabulous of gaming PC builds. This game is shown here streaming on a home-based wireless network from a Falcon Tiki PC working with a GeForce GTX 680 graphics card – it’s a top-level PC gaming experience streamed to a mobile device in the palms of your hands!

The Project SHIELD device you see here will be coming to you later this year straight from NVIDIA with very few changes between here and there – with the name being the first and perhaps largest update of the bunch. From what we’ve heard about this device thus far, it’s only the final name and a set of tweaks that need to be done to the hardware that stand between this device and its final release build. Then it’ll be the first consumer mobile smart device created by and branded straight up NVIDIA, top to bottom!

What you’re seeing here is the device running Android, but streaming Borderlands 2 from a PC over a wireless network. This is the first of a series of NVIDIA’s “Project SHIELD PC Mondays” in which you’ll see the machine busting out with PC power with great ease. The stream you’re seeing here is happening in real time, with the display of the computer in the background showing how instantaneously you’re getting not just the graphics, but the gameplay as well.

This streaming action also includes the highest graphics settings you’ve worked with on your PC as well. This is no “tune it down so you can stream” sort of situation. You’ll be working with the NVIDIA GeForce Experience to optimize your gameplay for your PC, then Project SHIELD will work with that top-notch experience. Hot stuff!

Have a peek at the timeline below to see all the NVIDIA Project SHIELD action you can handle right here on SlashGear, and check out our Tegra Hub for an NVIDIA overdose – graphics and processing power and mobile gaming, oh my!

NVIDIA Project SHIELD demos Borderlands 2 in live PC gaming stream is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.