NVIDIA announced a gaming console based on Android

At the press conference held in Las Vegas on the eve of the opening of the largest consumer electronics show CES 2013, NVIDIA announced the Tegra 4 chip and the gaming console Project Shield running on Android 4.1.

The gadget has an unconventional form factor. It looks like a gamepad with a 5-inch screen attached, featuring a resolution of 1280×720. The amount of built-in memory has not been disclosed yet, but it is known that the device has a micro-SD slot.

To display images on a large television screen, an HDMI port is provided. As for battery life, according to the developers, the battery can provide 5-10 hours of gaming and 24 hours of HD video playback.

Interestingly, the device can be used not only to run Android games but also as a receiver for streaming PC games from a computer equipped with a GeForce GTX 650 or higher graphics card. This mode was demonstrated at the press conference using Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Assassin’s Creed 3 as examples.

The estimated release time for Project Shield in the US and Canada is the second quarter of 2013. NVIDIA has not yet announced pricing information.