Nvidia demonstrates Borderlands 2 on Project SHIELD

Nvidia seems poised to become the next big player in the handheld games market with its Project SHIELD. The company has released a video that showcases the device’s game-streaming capabilities. The video shows someone playing Borderlands 2 on the handheld console.

The video is the first in a series of videos called PC Mondays that showcase the PC-streaming capabilities of Project SHIELD. Steam seems to run Big Picture Mode when connected with Project SHIELD. Borderlands 2 was picked for the demonstration as it is one of the best PhysX games available.

Judging by the video, SHIELD seems very capable of running games, especially with real-time physics through Nvidia PhysX and all the graphics at the highest possible setting. According to the video, a lot of development time went into tweaking the handheld device's audio. It is said to have speakers that are bigger than they appear.

Nvidia announced Project SHIELD back in January during CES. The device can run both Android and PC games. It has access to Google Play for Android games, and acts as a wireless receiver and controller for PC games on systems that are powered by Nvidia GeForce GTX GPUs. It can also access titles from a computer's Steam games library.

Runs Borderlands 2 by streaming it from a PC just fine

"Project SHIELD was created by NVIDIA engineers who love to game and imagined a new way to play," said Jen-Hsun Huang, Co-Founder and CEO at NVIDIA, during the announcement. "We were inspired by a vision that the rise of mobile and cloud technologies will free us from our boxes, letting us game anywhere, on any screen. We imagined a device that would do for games what the iPod and Kindle have done for music and books, letting us play in a cool new way. We hope other gamers love SHIELD as much as we do."

As Windows and Android are some of the world's most successful computing platforms and have a thriving developer ecosystem, Project SHIELD is designed to allow users to enjoy both Android and Windows Games. It will also have access to Nvidia's TegraZone game store, which has games with high graphical fidelity specially designed with the Tegra processors in mind.

Project SHIELD uses the Tegra 4 processor to offer what the company claims is a console-grade controller. It can be used to play on its own integrated screen or on a big screen. It has a 5-inch screen with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels, giving it a pixel density of 294 dpi. The screen also uses the Tegra 4's Direct Touch technology for touch input.