What's up with Project Shield?

[psoomah]

Here's my take:

Project Shield only ever make sense to me as part of a larger effort by Nvidia to provide a comprehensive solution to Valve for Steam Box, specifically as an in house remote terminal for Gabe's desired 'multiple simultaneous game streaming' capability. At CES Nvidia certainly seemed to have an inside track for that inclusion with Valve name dropping Nvidia on more than one occasion. Nvidia had to go for it, Steam Box was absolutely it's last chance to stay in the game (as it were) at all and stay relevant to the developers and publishers.

But ... when Sony revealed the PS4 specs and reliable rumors indicated the Xbox would share that same 8 Jaguar core/GCN HSA APU ... that pretty much sealed Nvidia's fate. AMD was already in bed with game engine developers and publishers to optimize for AMD hardware and ease of cross porting. The developers and publishers were living the dream. By that time Crystal Dynamics has already given Nvidia the middle finger. I doubt it has been the only one to do so. Nvidia's star is clearly on the descent. Maxwell is going to be DOA to the developers, they'll want nothing to do with it. Gabe would have faced a developer revolt if he had chucked all those advantages and ease of porting aside and went with an Intel/Nvidia solution. They would have all but demanded an AMD HSA APU solution.

So Nvidia rolled the dice and went big and still lost (Tesla anyone?) and now they have the Shield (get it, *SHIELD*) in hand and nowhere to go with it. Hey, let's throw it against the wall and see if anything sticks! Whatever. Whistling past the graveyard. JHH knows it's going to be all downhil in the consumer graphics business and, quite possibly, eventually in the professional graphics business too. Tegra hasn't proved to be the hoped for salvation and ARM and Qualcomm are both founding members of the HSA foundation, so that's headed Nvidia's way in the ARM SOC space too. Along with AMD's upcoming HSA ARM SOCs.

Desperation time. Put the Nvidia IP on the license block time. Try and generate SOME damned future revenue stream that might grow instead of shrink.

 

[Genx87]

Oh look another one of hundreds of Nvidia is dead thread. If you think AMD has the ability to reap any benefit from being in bed with the console makers. Then why couldn't they capitalize when they had 2 of the 3 in the last generation? Just have to get that last one to maybe break 40% market share and not lose billions in market cap?

You realize the porting between the consoles will be using an API right? You think EA or Activision is going to hand code on the hardware layer for call of duty or battlefield? lmao.

 

[masteryoda34]

My take: Shield is just a tech demo for Tegra and cloud GPU computing.

 

[Barfo]

stfu fanboys

 

[Aikouka]

I think that NVIDIA really needs to promote Shield heavily with their GPUs. Do some combo deal with the big retailers (NewEgg, Amazon, Tiger Direct, etc.) where if you purchase a GPU and a Shield, you get $50-100 off. Although, that's based on my opinion that Shield's shining feature is the PC streaming capability. I'm tempted to get one, but I'd really prefer to see how well the streaming works for people... especially once it's no longer considered beta.

 

[Grooveriding]

Nvidia's graphics cards are good, but shield is a joke. It's going to be a small niche product that no one can really be bothered with. Who is hard up enough to need a joystick and button pad for portable gaming so badly that they'll use it with a product that has a crappy chip behind it weaker than what is in current smartphones.

As for the streaming aspect, I can just run an HDMI cable from my PC into my TV and get a much better, latency-free experience.

Some people will buy it, but it's nothing of note and is mostly a silly gimmick product in its appeal level when I look at what it offers. The idea above of combo deals with GPUs is a good one, because at its suggested retail MSRP, it's a farce. $100-$150 is about all it is worth imo.

 

[Red Storm]

As for the streaming aspect, I can just run an HDMI cable from my PC into my TV and get a much better, latency-free experience.

What you describe is not streaming, not even comparable.

 

[Grooveriding]

What you describe is not streaming, not even comparable.

Exactly, it's far superior. Never mind that you still need to use a physical cable to run the shield into an hdmi port on your TV, along with dealing with the latency added by having your PC wirelessly sending your game to the shield and then to your TV.

It's just a silly product. I couldn't imagine wanting to play the games I do on my PC on a crappy little handheld screen with a joystick and button setup with high latency either.

Price has already been dropped by $100 and it hasn't even been released yet. I sense strong fail in the force.

 

[Red Storm]

Exactly, it's far superior. Never mind that you still need to use a physical cable to run the shield into an hdmi port on your TV, along with dealing with the latency added by having your PC wirelessly sending your game to the shield and then to your TV.

It's just a silly product. I couldn't imagine wanting to play the games I do on my PC on a crappy little handheld screen with a joystick and button setup with high latency either.

Price has already been dropped by $100 and it hasn't even been released yet. I sense strong fail in the force.

No, what you're talking about is playing games on your TV. That's not streaming, that's not what Shield is even about. What Shield gives you is the ability to play your Steam library laying down in bed, or on the toilet, or on the couch, or out in your yard. It let's you play games without having to be tethered to your PC.

I'm not buying one and I don't think it's worth the price, but I just wanted to correct you on the streaming part.

 

[Grooveriding]

What happens is that your computer does the work of rendering the game and the actual visual/audio output that would normally go to your monitor/speakers is wirelessly streamed to the shield. Alternately if you plug the shield into a physical ethernet jack it goes over the LAN that way. Then your inputs via the joystick are sent back to your PC etc.

Not streaming in the remote server cloud sense, but it is streaming locally. I understand your clarification though

 

[AstroManLuca]

To me the Shield seems like it would only appeal to a tiny niche of people for whom the PS Vita isn't "hardcore" enough, while the Vita itself a tiny niche of the total portable gaming segment, far behind the 3DS and phones/tablets. I can't see it being a financial success.

 

[Aikouka]

To me the Shield seems like it would only appeal to a tiny niche of people for whom the PS Vita isn't "hardcore" enough, while the Vita itself a tiny niche of the total portable gaming segment, far behind the 3DS and phones/tablets. I can't see it being a financial success.

Mmm I don't think that's really the case. I own a Vita, and I'm still interested in this thing because of the streaming capability. Sometimes I just want to chill in bed or wherever, and the streaming would be nice for that. Although, is that worth $300 or the original $350? I think that's a hard pill to swallow. I think I could accept it for $200, but $300... ehh a low maybe.

Also, one other feature I thought about would be the ability to use it as a wireless controller with your PC. I'm not sure how easy that would be to implement, but if someone doesn't own the 360 controller + wireless adapter, that could essentially save them $50. It's all about inherent value.

 

[blackened23]

Android games. Don't make me laugh. What a joke of a product. And 300$? Who is nvidia trying to kid here? Android games suck.

And then there's the PC streaming feature. Which I can only do IN THE SAME HOUSEHOLD with a kepler PC. Yawn. Worthless. Absolutely worthless. I guess it's a great product when you want to play a PC game streamed while taking a dump and can't access your PC. Otherwise, I think i've made my point.

 

[Dankk]

Android games. Don't make me laugh. What a joke of a product. And 300$? Who is nvidia trying to kid here? Android games suck.

And then there's the PC streaming feature. Which I can only do IN THE SAME HOUSEHOLD with a kepler PC. Yawn. Worthless. Absolutely worthless. I guess it's a great product when you want to play a PC game streamed while taking a dump and can't access your PC. Otherwise, I think i've made my point.

^This.

A $300 "mobile" device that lets you stream games from your desktop PC, but you can only do it within a limited range. And you can't do it with just any game either; games have to officially support it. Right now it only supports a measly 10 games. And it requires a Nvidia card. You can also play crappy Android games on it (something my cell phone can already do.)

I'd rather save $100 and buy a proper handheld, like a 3DS or a Vita.

This thing will not succeed by any stretch.

Edit: It might be worth looking into if it universally supported all PC games. How hard could it really be to implement this? Maybe if there was a USB dongle that connected to your PC, which emulated a 360 controller (most PC games have native support for 360 gamepads). Then, it would simply be a matter of broadcasting a low-latency audio and video signal to your shield, and controller input from the Shield would be broadcasted back. The PC game would simply think that a 360 controller is plugged in, and the broadcasting software would work completely separate from the game. I'm not a tech guy though so I might be talking out of my ass.

 

[Aikouka]

And then there's the PC streaming feature. Which I can only do IN THE SAME HOUSEHOLD with a kepler PC. Yawn. Worthless. Absolutely worthless. I guess it's a great product when you want to play a PC game streamed while taking a dump and can't access your PC. Otherwise, I think i've made my point.

What's the point of low-latency streaming when you're adding latency through Internet hops? I mean... I could probably stream through my phone fairly well given Verizon's low latency on their LTE ( bandwidth isn't as good though ), but I'd still be adding in about 20-40ms.

Also, isn't the Kepler restriction related to how NVIDIA put a video encoder with direct access to the output buffer? I don't know if AMD's cards have anything similar, but that's supposedly how they get good latency on local WiFi.

EDIT:

Edit: It might be worth looking into if it universally supported all PC games. How hard could it really be to implement this?

In the MD&G thread on it, some people said that there is an easy but manual way around the beta game restriction, so it's definitely possible.

 

[Nintendesert]

It's priced way too high for a pretty niche product. I personally feel if you can't game at your computer with a good monitor what's the point?

I suppose there are people so completely addicted they can't even take a shit without a fix.