Firsthand Impressions of Now-Delayed NVIDIA SHIELD 74
NVIDIA's Android-based gaming gaming handheld called SHIELD was to start shipping today to customers who had pre-ordered it. Reader MojoKid writes "Unfortunately, in its last round of QA work, NVIDIA uncovered a problem with a third-party component used in SHIELD and will be pushing the launch date out into July. NVIDIA is, however, allowing some members of the press to talk a bit about their experiences with a couple of Tegra 4-optimized games — namely Real Boxing and Blood Sword: Sword of Ruin — and also about an AR Drone controlled by SHIELD with a bird's eye view. The AR Drone streams video from its on-board HD camera to the SHIELD device as you fly. Just launching the thing high into the air and peering into trees or over the houses in the neighborhood is really cool."
Both links to the same page... (Score:2, Funny)
...for double the hits.
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I doubt a 100g of fertilizer is going to do much.
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Will July be late enough? (Score:1)
Ouya could have benefited from another month or two...
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Being a PS3 guy I do not like the XBox like layout of the Ouya controller.
Since though it is Open Source I can wait for someone else to create good PS3 type controllers for it and then use those.
Bonus.
Pair Dual Shock 3 to Ouya (Score:2)
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Yup.
Either way I just think that a new one could be interesting.
The openness of the Ouya definitely has advantages.
gaming gaming (Score:1)
NVIDIA's Android-based gaming gaming handheld called SHIELD was to start shipping today to customers who had pre-ordered it.
I see the editor is a fan of Little Ceaser's
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Totally! It's just so much effort to walk all the way to the gaming rig to play a game. OMG, it's like all the way across the room. And why would I want to play my PC game on a 27" screen when I can play it on a 5" screen?
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What carrying case with a gamepad? (Score:2)
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And why would I want to play my PC game on a 27" screen when I can play it on a 5" screen?
That depends on how your PC's operating system implements dual-monitor support. I imagine that if someone else is using the 27" screen for Facebook or YouTube or something, you can use the 5" screen for your game.
Not everyone lives alone (Score:2)
Why would someone else be using his PC?
Because not everyone lives alone, for one thing. For "someone else" read "another member of the household" or "a house guest".
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For a house guest to ask to use my PC is considered the height of bad manners. You either bring your own device
You may consider asking to use your computer "the height of bad manners." Someone else might disagree with you, considering denial of use of a guest account itself a selfish act and "the height of bad manners." If my family is hosting an annual reunion, for example, "go back to Arizona and get your laptop, or I'll have to exclude you from participating in video games" isn't going to cut it.
or you go to an internet cafe.
If two children live together, how do you recommend that they play a two-player video game?
PC and Internet hospitality toward house guests (Score:2)
There is no excuse for someone not having their own PC, tablet, smartphone or whatever.
The excuse for not carrying a smartphone is that not everybody has hundreds of dollars of discretionary income to spend on a data plan. Verizon and Sprint refuse entirely to activate voice-only service on a smartphone, and AT&T is known for cramming a data plan onto a voice-only SIM when the SIM is inserted into a smartphone [slashdot.org]. Should someone carry a laptop everywhere and risk having it stolen just in case he needs to access the Internet at someone's house? And even if so, would you let a house guest use
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use a different telco.
Which "different telco" do you recommend for occasional-use voice-only service (120 USD per year or less) on a smartphone?
If the child's parent doesn't have $300 of disposable income, then they probably should not have had a child.
A lot of circumstances can change between conception and when the child is old enough to learn how to take care of a laptop.
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I know that I want this. Being able to stream PC games to a handheld anywhere in the house opens up more gaming time.
Anywhere in the house, eh? Why don't you just read the shampoo bottle, or count tiles like the rest of us.
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Not at the currently asking price, nope.
If it worked as a standalone unit, then maybe, but oh wait, I already own a PS Vita, Note 2, Nexus 10, and notebook.
I'm pretty sure most people already have at least one portable device to play games on, making the Shield effectively superfluous.
Either no buttons or no indie (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure most people already have at least one portable device to play games on
The vast majority of these portable devices suffer from one of two flaws. It could be that the device has no buttons for applications' use, making it unsuitable for certain genres such as platformers and fighting games. This is true of most phones and tablets, which ship without a built-in gamepad and aren't bundled with a Bluetooth gamepad. For example, the only buttons on many iOS and Android devices are system buttons: sleep, quit, volume up, and volume down. Or it could be that the device has only one a
Android still needs better games. (Score:5, Interesting)
According to wikipedia there are over 900 million Android mobile devices in the world. That's a lot of potential gamers who want to play something better than Fruit Ninja. At this point EA ports some of their stuff and then there's Gameloft - everything they publish would be laughed off another platform.
I have a Tegra 3 based device - an Asus Transformer - and Need for Speed is the only game I play that doesn't piss me off.
"...but there's no buttons or joystick and so controls suck" Bullshit. I've paired a Wii classic controller through bluetooth and used it to play old MAME arcade stuff. There's countless bluetooth joysticks in the world. Game publishers could code the option to use them (and tell gamers it's heavily recomended) and then start writing some decent games.
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900 M devices & most owners who will not pay a single penny for any extra software.
Especially to a US (game) company.
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Those whom would pay for extra hardware tend to also be those who would purchase extra software.
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Possibly. However people tend to undervalue software. People that complain that a phone app costs 99c, then go spend $3 on a coffee. There seem to be plenty of people that see hardware as tangible and something they won't get for free so they'll pay for it. But then software cost is avoidable, either by just sticking to free software or by pirating commercial stuff.
So I expect there's an awful lot of people that would buy hardware add-ons that won't pay for games.
You said "tend", and I think that's right. B
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No Wii Remote on Android 4.2 (Score:3)
I've paired a Wii classic controller through bluetooth
The application you probably used to do this stopped working under Android 4.2 [ccpcreations.com]. Now all I get on my Nexus 7 is "No route to host".
There's countless bluetooth joysticks in the world.
But not 900 million of them. How many people would be willing to buy a $60 Bluetooth joystick that clamps onto a phone or tablet just to play a $3 game?
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You're right that I'm still running 4.1.1, I wan't aware the Wiimote app had stopped working. To be honest, it's not a big picture solution to the problem.
Ultimately for gaming to expand on Android players need to know when they buy a game
1) It will work on their device.
2) The controls will be more that a hodge-podge of shakes and swipe actions. It's time for bluetooth joystick support to become standard. When you buy computer hardware it usually has stickers "Compatable with..." and then all the flavors
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The application you probably used to do this stopped working under Android 4.2 [ccpcreations.com]. Now all I get on my Nexus 7 is "No route to host".
This is total horseshit on Google's part. I recently switched from a phone running Gingerbread to a Galaxy Nexus running 4.2.2 and I can pretty definitively say Android is worse for it. Bluetooth connectivity just plain doesn't work for a lot of stuff, what does work takes for-goddamn-ever to connect, the sound quality is crap, and they even took out proxy authintication for the browser. Why? Who the fuck knows? tl, dr: Fuck Google and fuck their Android "improvements"
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Use a USB controller (Score:3)
It's a little known fact that Android supports USB controllers... I use one from time to time on the nexus 7.
Adding a $9 USB gamepad and a USB OTG cable can immensely improve the tablet gaming experience.
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Adding a $9 USB gamepad and a USB OTG cable can immensely improve the tablet gaming experience.
I've used a USB OTG cable to connect a controller to my Nexus 7. But this runs into a few problems in practice. Solve all these problems and I'll agree with you.
First, it might work for tablets if you already have a stand, but can you recommend something to hold a phone in place while the user is holding the controller? The Shield has a hinge to hold the screen in place, much like the Game Boy Advance SP. It's like the difference between a laptop and a tablet with a separate keyboard, and an integrated k
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Do you rank your favourite games by how much they cost?
No, but a video game developer chooses a platform by the size of the audience, and there isn't yet much of an audience for Android games that require a gamepad.
How big has Android+gamepad audience grown? (Score:2)
a video game developer chooses a platform by the size of the audience
it's growing
But how big has it grown? Whether or not a company is willing to port a game to Android to reach Ouya, Shield, and Moga users depends on how well those products have sold. I'm surprised that a lot of manufacturers hide their sales figures from the public. I would figure that a manufacturer would want to brag about how many of its product have been sold to encourage developers to port their games.
Not yet ported to Android BECAUSE of no gamepad (Score:2)
How much time/money do you think it takes to implement gamepad support compared to the rest of a game project's development? Maybe a couple of days with an SDK?
Sometimes, the producer doesn't even consider porting a particular game to a particular platform until the platform has gamepad support. In such a case, it might take even longer to get the port up and running, as the port team would have to familiarize itself with the new platform. Ouya and Shield hitting store shelves and the "Gooya" announcement are likely to change this.
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But not 900 million of them. How many people would be willing to buy a $60 Bluetooth joystick that clamps onto a phone or tablet just to play a $3 game?
I'm sure the person would play more then 1 game.
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I'm sure the person would play more then 1 game.
More than one game? Yes. More than one game that needs a gamepad? Not quite as likely. If ten games are installed on a device but a gamepad improves only one of them, I'm not so sure the person would buy a gamepad.
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> That's a lot of potential gamers who want to play something better than Fruit Ninja.
Except that you're assuming:
a) That all 900M of those devices are still active (bitter about a shoddily made $99 tablet).
b) Of the active ones, that they're capable of gaming (my phone's fine, but the tablets weren't, Android market fragmentation).
c) Of those remaining, that their owners want to game.
d) Of that subset, that they want to play something better than Fruit Ninja.
and possibly:
e) Of THAT subset, that the
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Nintendo sold 118m Gameboy handhelds. The DS has sold 157m worldwide. Android dwarfs both of those numbers.
I doubt all Android owners are all gamers or that they all have a device worth playing on. Still, nothing changes the fact this is a neglected, potentially huge market for quality gaming. The big names in game development are staying away in droves.
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Fine, we disagree. I don't see how one would pitch developing one's game in Android. Too many variables:
- Screen Resolution - A free Android phone from my carrier is 480x800. It isn't, but for convenience's sake, let's call that the base. Top is 1080p (1920x1080, I always have to check), with 4k on the horizon eventually.
- Screen Size - Phone is 3.7", top "vaguely affordable living room" screen is what, now, 80"?
- CPU / RAM - God only knows, let alone the question of resources actually available.
- Local
Form factor sucks (Score:2)
I mean the games could be cool, and the performance great, but it doesn't change the fact they slapped a screen on a controller and called it a day.
At a time when everybody is going crazy about thin devices like tablets and phones, this thing comes out as an affront to good design.
Sure, I guess nVidia is testing the waters and seeing if there is even any interest in them producing a game platform, but I mean its a pretty weak effort IMHO. Maybe their follow up will be more inspiring, if they get to that po
AR Drone (Score:2)