It isn’t Christmas yet, but it might as well be for fans and owners of NVIDIA‘s hit SHIELD Tablet gaming device and productivity gadget in one. Even before the upcoming holiday and shopping madness sets in, NVIDIA is announcing three treats coming our way. First is the much awaited update that will be bringing in the sweetness of Android Lollipop. Second is the fresh new batch of high-profile games, including Valve’s Half-Life 2: Episode One. And last but not least is GRID, NVIDIA’s “Netflix for games”.
NVIDIA already made it known that Android 5.0 will be arriving on the tablet sometime this month, so this bit isn’t exactly a huge surprise. The update will also include changes to Dabbler, NVIDIA’s physics-based painting app, now with a Material Design look, support for layers, and livestreaming over at Twitch.tv. Later this month as well, the SHIELD Hub will also get refreshed, with a brand new superpower that deserves a treatment of its own.
But what good would a gaming device be without games? The SHIELD Tablet is definitely not wanting in that regard, with a wide variety of exclusive titles, the whole lot of Android games, and, of course, supported PC games streamed via GameStream. But now, there are new bad boys in town. Making its mobile debut is Valve’s Half-Life 2: Episode one, optimized for the Tegra K1 and exclusive to the SHIELD Tablet. This title will be bundled in a “Green Box” offer, which includes Half-Life 2 and Portal, available for free on the 32 GB LTE SHIELD Tablet. In addition to this, there are three other Tegra-optimized games that can be downloaded from Google Play Store, namely Pure Pool, the action adventure Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, and space combat Strike Suit Zero. It should be noted that the last two are games that have been released before on consoles and PC.
Perhaps the biggest gaming news of all is the formal announcement of GRID, NVIDIA’s take on the idea of on-demand gaming. Pretty much like Sony’s PlayStation Now, which remains in beta, NVIDIA GRID will stream AAA titles to your SHIELD device, over the Internet, and remotely running on “state of the art” NVIDIA GPU servers. In short, you no longer have to worry about download times, installation, and hardware requirements and dig into the game. Presuming, of course, you have a fast and stable Internet connection. At the moment, there are only 20 games in GRID’s list, including Batman Arkham City, Borderlands 2, and Psychonauts, but NVIDIA promises new games will arrive every week.
To recap this flood of information:
• NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet will be updated to Android 5.0 Lollipop later this month and later, the SHIELD Hub app.
• New games exclusive or optimized for SHIELD devices are here: Half-Life 2: Episode One, Pure Pool, Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, and Strike Suit Zero.
• NVIDIA GRID is here, with 20 triple-A titles in store and more to come, free for the SHIELD Tablet and SHIELD Portable until June 30, 2015.
When the update will hit the SHIELD Portable, NVIDIA still hasn’t mentioned, but at least GRID will be available to its owners as well. Still no dice for the Tegra Note 7, unfortunately.
Yay a bundle loaded with FPS’s, cause you know nobody plays anything other than First Person Shooters! Give me a break Nvidia if you want people to buy your hardware stop copying and pasting the AAA market and carve out your own niche. What Nvidia needs to focus on is expanding the other genres on their platform and Anfroid for that matter that people want to play.
I want this tablet so bad. I hope it’s on sale with the bundle package somewhere for this black friday. Anybody know where there’s a deal somewhere?