NVIDIA sees opportunity in becoming an Android gaming leader

NVIDIA is latching onto the Android opportunity with Android gaming devices. According to the company, Android is becoming "the largest computing platform in history" with more than a billion active Android users, and hardcore (subscription-based) gaming could be the next big thing.

"The Google Play Android market generated roughly US$250 million in revenue in the first quarter, up 2.5 times from a year earlier. And 90% of those revenues came from games," said Jeff Fisher, who is Senior VP of the GeForce business unit at NVIDIA, in a blog post. “Our aim is to turbocharge Android gaming. After all, the pieces are all there. It’s an open platform. It has a vast user base. Now it’s time to add the performance – and the tools – to inspire developers to create never-before-seen experience."

Source: NVIDIA.

The company has added the SHIELD tablet and SHIELD controller to its existing SHIELD portable to create a whole family of SHIELD Android gaming hardware. The tablet was launched on July 22, with the company stressing that its portable offering will continue to be supported. Firsts for a tablet, the company said, include:

• PC streaming: First to stream games from a PC desktop or notebook using NVIDIA GameStream technology, which streams from NVIDIA GeForce GTX- powered GPUs.
• Twitch and NVIDIA ShadowPlay: First to feature ShadowPlay, a game-capture tool that lets users save and stream their greatest gaming moments to Twitch, the leading video platform and community for gamers. Gamers can stream titles from the SHIELD tablet to friends and foes worldwide. The SHIELD tablet also includes a 5MP front camera to enhance the image of the gamer overlaid on the Twitch gamecast.
• Console Mode: First to feature NVIDIA Console Mode, which takes tablet gameplay to big-screen TVs. Gamers can connect their SHIELD wireless controller, play PC and Android games, browse the web, and watch movies -- all in native 1080p HD.

"Thanks to ShadowPlay, virtually any Android game running on the SHIELD tablet can be broadcast to Twitch with built-in support for the SHIELD tablet’s front-facing 5MP camera, microphone and chat overlays. Now you can broadcast and record your games with the touch of a button. No need for external capture hardware," noted Patrick Beaulieu in a companion blog post.

July 29 will see SHIELD wireless controller compatibility, along with a new SHIELD Hub app and GameStream enhancements to the tablet and the portable, the company said in a July 22 blog post.


"Each of these devices is built to offer an incredible Android and PC gaming experience, and each product is purpose built to give individual gamers exactly what they need," Fisher said in his post.

The SHIELD portable and the TegraZone game delivery platform are part of the equation. The next step is new tools for developers and new features for gamers, Fisher said.

"Gamers can play Android games, with exclusive features like Gamepad Mapper turning their favorite Android games into titles they can blast through with SHIELD’s controller. They can stream games from their PCs. And they can play these games on their high-definition TVs. We’ve even been running trials that let SHIELD users stream AAA games from the cloud," Fisher revealed.