Nvidia has announced the launch date and price for pre-orders of their upcoming portable gaming device, the Shield, which will be available in June from a number of retailers.
The pre-orders will open on 20 May with a $349 (R3,200*) price tag, but fans who have signed up to receive Shield updates by clicking “Notify Me” on the SHIELD website http://shield.nvidia.com/ will have an opportunity to pre-order starting 14 May.
The new handheld is running on the company’s 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 also works with Steam, and can stream games to the device from any PC using a GeForce GTX 650 or higher, which is something to consider if you’re looking to play some high-end games on the device.
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 up to 38 hours of battery life.
There is also a micro SD slot, one USB port and an HDMI output.
Project Shield made a huge splash at CES 2013, taking home multiple awards for the Best of Show, and from a gamer’s standpoint, does look very impressive.
Nvidia Shield features:
- Tegra 4 – The world’s fastest mobile processor delivers rich graphics and unbeatable performance thanks to 72 GPU cores, four CPU cores and 2GB of RAM
- Console-grade controller – Precise control thanks to dual analog joysticks, a full-sized D-Pad, left and right analog triggers, full-sized bumpers and A/B/X/Y buttons
- Multi-touch display – 5-inch, 720p retinal multi-touch display for high-fidelity visuals
- Integrated speakers – Custom, bass reflex, tuned port audio system – we think this is SHIELD’s sleeper feature
- Wi-Fi – 802.11n 2X2 MIMO game-speed Wi-Fi for game streaming
- Pure Android – Latest Android Jelly Bean operating system from Google, for access to Android games and apps
- There’s more – We put into SHIELD everything we would want in a premium mobile gaming device: 16 GB memory, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, a mini-HDMI output, micro-USB 2.0, a microSD storage slot, a 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack.
*1 USD = 9.2 ZAR (14 May 2013)
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“The pre-orders will open on 20 May with a $349 (R3,200*) price tag”
Which basically means that once we get it (why always with hardware?) we’ll expect to pay around R5999. The specs sound pretty awesome though (16 GB memory :O) – throw in the ability to use it as a phone and I’m sold!