Nvidia’s Project Shield in action: Borderlands 2 on a handheld

One of the more surprising and interesting announcements out of last months Consumer Electronics Show was Nvidia’s Project Shield, a handheld gaming device powered by the company’s new Tegra 4 chip. Looking like a large Xbox 360 controller, Project Shield includes a 5-inch 720p display and runs on Android. It’s one of Nvidia’s first forays into building its own complete consumer devices; the only Nvidia products on store shelves now are graphics cards for PCs.

Although Project Shield was demonstrated on stage at CES, Nvidia is planning a number of weekly follow-up videos to show off the product. The first is now online and while it’s clearly an attempt to market the handheld and highlight the Tegra 4 chip capabilities, I think it’s worth sharing for two reasons. First, few people have really seen this device in action and second, the product may be the best yet at bringing true PC gaming to portable devices.

This particular demo focuses more on streaming a game from the PC to Project Shield, so I doubt the Tegra 4 chip is working hard; the device is essentially a remote client to the local computer or Wi-Fi. Still, there doesn’t appears to be any lag at all, which is both impressive and necessary for this type of gaming solution.

I’m definitely interested in seeing demonstrations of how Android games look and run on Project Shield because gamers aren’t always near their PC for game streaming. Prior games optimized for the Tegra 3 were impressive and I expect more of the same on Project Shield.