Powerful Portable Gaming Device Arrives from Unexpected Source

1 August 2013

Ben Logan

Director

Passionate about improving services and experiences for the people that use them.

Portable gaming might not seem to be the best venture to currently embark upon, with Nintendo’s 3DS having more or less sown up the market for core gamers and thereby leaving the more powerful Sony Vita behind.

Into this market though, Nvidia have seen fit to launch their new ‘Shield’ – a high quality handheld gaming device whose performance is being described by reviewers as “incredible”.

Nvidia’s first end-user release resembles a 5 inch Android tablet protruding from a console style gaming controller. As such it can run all of the expected Android apps, but also serves as a powerful portable gaming device, which is sadly lacking in the optimised games niche.

During usability testing, it’s been found that many PC games are hard to set up on the device when away from a mouse/keyboard environment, and some failed to launch at all. Having said that though, the games that are currently working do play very nicely, with some having enhanced visuals for the device.

Shield also boasts a solid user interface and with the release of further optimised games, it could become a very viable option for portable PC gaming.