It’ll stream PC games wirelessly from your high-end rig directly to its five-inch, 1280×720 screen. But it’ll set you back nearly £230 for the trouble.
Nvidia’s handheld, analogue stick-laden device will be available for $349 at Newegg, GameStop, Micro Center, Canada Computers and Nvidia.com when pre-orders begin on May 20.
The Shield is the PC manufacturer’s concerted effort to take advantage of advances in both mobile and cloud gaming, designed to “free us from our boxes”. Back when it was announced in January, it had the meaty presence of both Ubisoft and Epic behind it.
“Project Shield promises to bring both mobile and PC gamers a great new gaming experience,” said Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot at the time. “Seeing the PC version of Assassin’s Creed III run on the device is a great example of this, and further strengthens Ubisoft’s long-standing relationship with NVIDIA.”
“With Project Shield, NVIDIA brings an uncompromising, high-performance console experience to mobile devices,” said Epic’s Mark Rein. “Amazing games including Real Boxing and Hawken, which utilize the latest Unreal Engine technology, look fantastic on Project Shield.”
At that price point – which as Edge point out, is identical to that of the Wii U – I do wonder whether I’ll ever be wowed by one myself.
You can effectively pre-order a Shield today by signing up on Nvidia’s ‘Notify Me’ page. Do you think you will?