The NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV Review: A Premium 4K Set Top Box
by Ganesh T S on May 28, 2015 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Media Streamer
- Home Theater
- TV
- 4K
- Shield
- NVIDIA
Gaming - NVIDIA's Trump Card
NVIDIA's Tegra lineup has traditionally differentiated itself from a host of other ARM-based SoCs in the target market with the in-house GPU. In the Tegra X1, we have a GPU based on the Maxwell family, and as benchmarks showed, the performance is very good. Broadly speaking, next to 4K Netflix support, NVIDIA considers gaming capabilities to be the trump card for the SHIELD when compared to other OTT STBs.
With that said, you’re not going to be seeing a lot of official talk from NVIDIA about gaming on the SHIELD Android TV today, and that’s for two reasons. First and foremost is simply because not all of the pieces are ready. The commercial GRID service does not launch until next month, and while SHIELD can access the current beta service, it goes without saying that half of what we write on GRID will be made obsolete in 5 weeks anyhow. Meanwhile some of NVIDIA’s well-promoted AA and AAA games are ready – games like The Talos Principle and Doom 3: BFG – while other games like Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and Crysis 3 are not here.
The second reason meanwhile is that given the SHIELD’s launch amidst Google I/O, NVIDIA is also making the conscientious decision to focus on those features that are most relevant to the Google I/O crowd and the contents of Google’s presentation. With the device’s announcement at GDC 2015, NVIDIA played to gaming amidst a gaming crowd, while for the device’s launch they’re playing to everything that’s amazing about Android TV, the Android TV ecosystem, and 4K TV.
The point being that NVIDIA hasn’t forgotten about gaming, but the SHIELD Android TV’s gaming capabilities aren’t what NVIDIA is focusing on first. Expect to hear a lot more about gaming later in June once the GRID commercial service is up and running.
As for today’s launch, while gaming isn’t in the forefront, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. As we briefly mentioned earlier several high-profile games are already available, so we’ve still had a chance to look at what NVIDIA’s latest SHIELD can offer for gaming.
A big part of NVIDIA’s long-term gaming plans for the SHIELD family of devices involves working with game developers to ensure that Android gaming grows beyond the casual, free-to-play titles that are currently popular. As a product of these dev-relation efforts, a number of games are going to be introduced in the Play Store to bring out the gaming prowess of the Tegra X1. We had the chance to play around with a few such as The Talos Principle, Hotline Miami, Luftrausers, Doom 3 : BFG Edition, War Thunder and family-friendly casual games such as JUJU.
The above screenshot shows the level of graphics that provides for smooth playable frame rates in the SHIELD. Based on what I've seen, I don't believe the internal rendering resolution is 1080p in The Talos Principle, but I suspect it's not too far off.
With NVIDIA carrying over the SHIELD gamepad from last year's SHIELD Tablet launch, playing games on the SHIELD Android TV works about as well as you'd expect for a second-generation effort. The performance of the set top box is still closer to the last-generation consoles than the current-generation consoles, and graphics quality matches up accordingly. NVIDIA is well aware that they can't compete with the game consoles for first-run AAA games, so their focus here is going to be on a sort of best-of-the-best approach of bringing older, well received games to the console and a user base NVIDIA believes is distinct from the traditional game console crowd.
Shifting gears for a bit, we also have the matter of casual games. From a technical standpoint, it goes without saying that casual games such as JuJu do not pose much of a challenge for the SHIELD.
In addition to the above, NVIDIA has indicated that more than 20 new titles are coming exclusively to NVIDIA SHIELD in the coming months.
We also recorded power consumption at the wall while playing the above two games on a 4Kp60 display. In both cases the SHIELD consumed around 19.4 W on an average, considerably more than the power consumed in the media playback process.
Finally, one of the interesting features is the ability to live-stream to Twitch or record game-play using the SoC's hardware encoder. We tested the latter feature out. The resultant recordings were placed under /sdcard/Movies/Game Recordings. Irrespective of the playing resolution, the recording is always a 2 Mbps 854x480 video at 30 fps (encoded in H.264). The audio is a 128 kbps 2-channel AAC stream. The sample we recorded has been uploaded to YouTube and embedded below. Full MediaInfo details are available in the YouTube description.
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tipoo - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
Certainly seems performant enough, but will it get any exclusives. Even to the entire shield platform at least. Android games are....Ok, but hardly take advantage of the latest and greatest chips, most run fine even on my Moto G. Streaming is also neat, but I'd really like to see some exclusives that really target these high end chips with controllers.ganeshts - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link
Yes, NVIDIA has indicated around 20 exclusive titles are coming to Tegra K1 and X1-based SHIELD devices.Jumangi - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
What titles. I hope no body thinks they will be even remotely close to AAA level experiences. No developer is going to risk that kind of money on this machine. They will be cheesed low end android crap.TheJian - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Not sure what you're talking about. With unreal 4 and unity 5 engine support on android now you'll start to see some REAL games and they already have real PC ports (serious sam 3, Trine2, Portal, halflife 2, KOTOR etc). You might say PC ports are old (but they are AAA games), but if you know the sales #'s of each of these you understand not more than ~10mil played any of these titles that NOW can easily be ported to Android for a FULL (albeit older) PC game experience. More of these will likely come first, but by this xmas or next we'll start to see what unity5 and unreal 4 can produce. We are already way past angry birds...LOL. Trine 2 isn't a great looking title? That's a 2011 PC game. What exactly do you want? Trine2 runs on K1, we're already at X1 and 14nm Samsung fabbed version is coming for xmas (likely with return of Denver cpu amped up and more polished). We are not even taxing X1 yet, and the xmas version at 14nm will eat it alive. You clearly don't browse android games much to see what is already ported or new out there.This console has more power than an xbox360 or ps3. Not sure why you'd think we're talking Minecraft here or something. If you called xbox360/ps3 AAA experiences what is the difference? You can call that barely beating last gen, but this is the new xbox360/ps3 experience for the poor (or alternative gaming for me that isn't PC etc) who can't afford xbox1/ps4 price tag nor the $60+ games prices that come with those.
On top of that, you don't need a $600-1000 PC to play at 1080p 60fps. For a monthly fee of even $15 (180/yr) you'd get FAR more than 3 console games at $60ea correct? Right now (free) you get 50 games that can stream like this and surely many more coming year after year. The sheer value of GRID gaming here is massive for a person who doesn't have $60 a month to keep their kid playing xbox1/ps4 games. I'm going to guess there will be a $10 fee for 720 and $15 for 1080p gaming but you can insert whatever numbers you want here, I'm just making the point about affordability for amount of fun you get. Mind you as graphics amp up, GRID keeps you from needing to upgrade. Nvidia can easily make sure you're always getting the fps that is being sold to you. They can keep dropping servers around also to keep latency in check.
To your dev point, incorrect. Worst case scenario they can make it exclusive for 6mo-1yr then if sales suck port to PC or allow regular android to use it. You are forgetting that 1yr from now ALL gpus (14nm by then everywhere) will have X1 levels of gpu and if that's not the case by then 10nm isn't far behind. Also if NV wins the suit, everyone will be paying for NV gpu IP (great for devs) at some point. IF you make an unreal4/unity5 game here, you can easily port the thing to PC probably in a few weeks tops and it is running the exact Nvidia hardware there for ~75% of the discrete market on PC's. You're mistakenly acting as if you make a TEGRAZONE based game (meaning special for NV tegra hardware effect), it can NEVER run anywhere else...LOL.
It took a few weeks to port most of these titles.
http://www.tegrazone.com/games/witcherba
Just an example of your crappy games.. Looks pretty fun to me.
http://www.tegrazone.com/games/oddworldsw
Listen to the dev. 1st time in 1080p on mobile etc. Can't beat the price of $6 either. Full 20+hrs just like all the other full games I mentioned that MOST of the world hasn't even played. We see some REALLY great PC games being made for $2-10mil, so I'm pretty sure a dev aiming at top tegra devices won't have a problem shifting titles elsewhere if needed 6 months-1yr later. They are coming with a shield update this xmas (or before) too, so at some point you're going to have millions on these anyway much like a console and that's not counting the fact that lawsuits may lead to all of mobile being NV/AMD at some point (on the gpu side, ARM whatever on the cpu side). I can see myself playing many games with key/mouse on BT when gamepads don't work right also (large rpg game like Baldurs Gate on TV for instance etc). Like I said, massive cheap ports first, then use the cash from those to fund BIG new IP. At worse making a potent game here, only means you'll wait for 2yrs for everyone to be able to play it as gpu power surpasses X1 for even the junker tablets/phones etc at 10nm. IF you don't like waiting that long port to PC etc. You seem to not understand 2Billion units are sold yearly from here on out, which means 2Billion can play any android AAA title very soon. Far faster than say, waiting for consoles to get even 50mil on either side of MSFT or Sony (what is that 5yrs from now?). I'll take the 2Billion side if I'm a dev as GDC 2014/2015 surveys both show they have.
NV can also pay $2-4mil x 25 games to get exclusives they perhaps OWN (say 20mil on 5 top exclusives yearly? Hopefully more?), and then do the same at a later date by porting to PC etc. It's not risky knowing they can port easily to the same gpu on PC. I really hope they start funding games in this range for AAA experiences aimed at X1+. At some point they'll tell us numbers sold on a unit (maybe xmas handheld or android tv here), but not likely until they have a million unit sales launch or something. Maybe they'll wait for an unreal 4 engine showcase game to give us that data. Imagine what 10nm HBM2 version of Tegra will bring to the table...ROFL. Hopefully something from AMD then too for this type of stuff.
http://www.tegrazone.com/news/tabletssurpass
EA, tablets will surpass consoles, and add more to the bottom line THAN consoles. Simple math. Starting 2017 consoles have a real problem if not before as better games launch. HBM2 with 10nm socs will make some waves in replacement devices for what we have today and many problems will be created even at 14nm shortly as everyone rolls that out probably a few devices using HBM1 too in this next gen of ARM devices etc. WiiU just hit 10mil devices sold, and they have some AAA experiences correct? ;) Vainglory from iOS just got ported to NV. Between apples next devices (A9), NV's current and their next model at xmas, qcom's next model (after 810), etc you will have a 100mil+ (likely far higher) that can do X1 gpu levels and likely with 128bit bus everywhere adding more fuel. I really don't get your point ;) Have you seen modern combat 5 blackout or asphalt 8, Order & chaos online, Dungeon Hunter 4 etc? Not angry birds and neither aimed at X1 levels. Haters gonna hate I guess...
darkich - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
I doubt he'll even read your comment but I can say, thank youJumangi - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
It has nothing to do with capabilities. Try and understanding what I was actually saying. No developer is going to invest the time and money needed to make high end games for this thing. The return on investment isn't even remotely there.Odey - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
I am really not sure what you are talking about. Border Lands, the new Metal Gear, Doom3, Half Life, Star Wars series, Portal, Shadow Run, and many more..and I am sure that they will get the newer games as well.heygeo - Friday, July 31, 2015 - link
I understand what your trying to say and also agree, its about having limited engineering resources and the IMMEDIATE return on having them churn out product that will have the best chance of selling the most... in other words when you look at who out there owns this thing (remember not talking about all Android users just the ones with the graphical horsepower) its minute vs say PCs and consoles... while gaming is a passion to us its a business to them and in a crowded gaming platform field this one doesn't have the user base or differentiation to stand out.farble1670 - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link
Xbox / PS4 for the poor?if you look at the reasonable model, the one with the 500GB drive, it's only $50 less than the Xbox One and the PS4, which are orders of magnitude more powerful than the Shield. for only $40 more, wouldn't you want a top of the line next generation gaming console with hundreds of games and hundreds more committed?
if you're looking at the 16GB model (with 10GB of usable space), you won't be able to load more than a few high-end games. you can load them onto an SD card, but that's slower, and you *can't* store game data on the SD card, so if it's a game that downloads content, you're screwed.
i wanted to love the shield, but the price is silly. there's just no way they can compete with the subsidized prices of the Xbox One and PS4.
mkozakewich - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link
"...orders of magnitude better..."I'm pretty sure they aren't. I'd be surprised if the consoles get more than 6x the performance.
(That would equate to something like a comparison between 10fps and 60fps for a given display size, so it's not like it means nothing, but that's not even ONE order of magnitude.)