Nvidia's Shield console gets release date and price
Back at the CES in early January, NVIDIA didn’t just have news of its next SoCs to announce, but came ready to offer news of a new venture into mobile gaming.
It unveiled what it was then calling Project Shield, an all-in-one gaming console integrating a full-sized controller and a flip-up HD screen. The Android-running system would help introduce the world to NVIDIA’s latest chip, the Tegra 4. At the time, we didn’t get much info about important things like price or availability, but today NVIDIA finally has those launch details ready to share.
NVIDIA Shield will sell for $350, and ship this June. If you sign up for (or are already on) NVIDIA’s mailing list you can get a pre-order in now, or you can just wait until May 20 when pre-orders will go wide.
Obviously, Shield is powered by a Tegra 4 SoC. Augmenting that are 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage (with microSD expansion available for those real monsters of games). The system’s display is a five-inch 720p component.
While Shield will be getting some custom-tailored games of its own, the Android-4.2.1-running system will be able to play many standard Android games. There are some restrictions, like no support for landscape mode, but that still leaves plenty of titles you can enjoy.