Nvidia’s Project Shield – plays Android games and streams PC titles from Steam

The Android console sector just got serious with the announcement of a new competitor from PC component juggernaut Nvidia.

Project Shield will run both Android AND PC games. It’s compatible with all Google Play titles but will also stream ‘full’ PC games from any NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 (or higher) powered PC directly from a user’s Steam library.

It takes the form of a console-style joypad with attached 720p 294dpi multi-touch screen, although it is also able to output to a TV or monitor. It’s powered by an Nvidia Tegra 4 GPU and an ARM Cortex-A15 CPU.

It will also be compatible with streaming movie services such as Netflix.

"Project Shield was created by Nvidia engineers who love to game and imagined a new way to play," Nvidia co-founder and chief executive officer Jen-Hsun Huang stated.

"We were inspired by a vision that the rise of mobile and cloud technologies will free us from our boxes, letting us game anywhere, on any screen. We imagined a device that would do for games what the iPod and Kindle have done for music and books, letting us play in a cool new way. We hope other gamers love Shield as much as we do."

Ubisoft’s co-founder and chief executive officer Yves Guillemot added: "Ubisoft is always excited about new hardware developments, and Project Shield promises to bring both mobile and PC gamers a great new gaming experience. 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."

Here’s Nvidia’s debut video: