A New Gaming Console Brings 4K Streaming

At the 2015 Game Developers Conference, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced the new Nvidia Shield Console.

On Tuesday, at the 2015 Game Developers Conference, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang announced the new Nvidia Shield Console. The company has moved from chips, to portable devices, and now, finally, to the living room. The video game console will hook up to TVs or monitors, and is powered by Android TV and the all powerful and mighty Nvidia Tegra X1 chip. It will support 4K video and Nvidia is claiming that is has twice the horsepower of the Xbox 360.  

"It's an incredibly powerful, efficient and advanced living room entertainment device," said Nvidia president and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang in a statement. "It's the best Android TV experience. And it can transform into a serious gaming machine. It's made to game."

The console can run heavy games such as Crysis 3 and has an Android TV ecosystem to create a balanced living room environment. Additionally, it will already have output at 4K, whereas the other box sets do not have the ability yet.

The console will also offer access to the Nvidia Grid, the company’s game streaming service, likened to the “Netflix for games”, which until now has only been in Beta. Nvidia Grid will launch in May with 50 games, with promises to have 100 games by the end of 2015.

The company is selling it as living room entertainment, which is why it hasn’t given any exclusive services or games to the console, which may not be the best marketing strategy, for this Android TV in a sea of other Android TVs, such the Roku, and Amazon Fire TV. However, the console can run heavy games such as Crysis 3, and will undoubtedly use its 4K video capacity and Android TV ecosystem to create a balanced living room environment. Additionally, it will already have output at 4K, whereas the other box sets do not have the ability yet. It also includes HEVC and VP9 decoders, which would allow the console to stream 4K video from Netflix, YouTube, Chromecast, etc.

The console will hit retail stores in May of $199.