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Published in PC Hardware

Nvidia talks up Android gaming, confirms Shield 2

by on22 October 2013

Huang would love a Logan-based console

Nvidia’s Shield console has been out for months, but the reception has been lukewarm. Most reviewers agreed that the Shield was a very potent piece of kit, but on the other hand there’s not that many Android games that can push the hardware to its limits and PC streaming is still anything but mainstream.

Speaking on the sidelines of Nvidia’s Montreal event, CEO Jen Hsun Huang told Endgadget that he would love to see a Logan-powered version of Shield. Bear in mind that the original Shield was the first device to use Nvidia’s Tegra 4, so it’s possible that Nvidia could also launch Logan, or Tegra 5, in the next generation Shield, or perhaps a tablet of its own.

With much more powerful Kepler graphics, the next generation Shield console would provide plenty of performance, but performance is not an issue for the Shield anyway, it’s the ecosystem which still isn’t there. But Nvidia is in there for the long haul.

“Android is the world’s most open, but yet productised operating system. Android as you know has a mobile version that people use in phones, but you’re gonna see Android in cars, you’re gonna see Android in TVs, you’re gonna see Android in computers,” said Huang. “You’re gonna see Android really, really proliferating everywhere.”

This is where Nvidia hopes to make its mark. Huang pointed out that Android has the benefit of having more people working on the platform than on other platforms combined, which means the lack of top notch games and apps optimized for high definition tablets could become a thing of the past.

“We want to do for Android what Geforce did for PCs,” said Huang. He added that consumer GPUs turned ordinary PCs into powerful gaming machines. “We would like to do the same for Android machines.”

Asked whether a new Shield is in the works, Huang said a new Shield should be expected whenever there’s a new Tegra. He said Logan has all the architecture sophistication of PC gaming platforms, i.e. Kepler.

“It would bring me great joy if Shield was the first customer for Logan,” he said.

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