Nvidia Project Shield gaming handheld revealed

Nvidia has revealed a new Android-based handheld gaming system at its CES 2013 presentation.

The new handheld is running on the company’s recently announced Tegra 4 chip, and has cloud gaming capabilities, with the ability to stream high-end gaming titles which would only be available on the PC platform.

The system works with Steam, but will incorporate the streaming through Nvidia Grid, which is the company’s cloud processing solution for gaming.

The device itself is a controller with a screen mounted to it. The screen is a 5-inch touch screen, with a 1280 x 720 display at 294 dpi, and Nvidia promises 38 hours of gaming on the system.

There is also a micro SD slot, one USB port and an HDMI output.

During the presentation, Nvidia’s Jen-Hsun Huang demonstrated Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Assassin’s Creed III running on the system.

Project Shield is currently in the beta stage of development and is expected to ship in Q2 2013.