NVIDIA has teased a Shield tablet and wireless controller

Earlier today Nvidia launched a brilliant text adventure game to promote a mysterious forthcoming product, but a leak may have ruined the surprise. A series of slides resembling a typical Nvidia press deck has leaked (intercepted via VideoCardz.com), revealing two new members of the Shield family: A tablet and a wireless controller. Many were expecting a successor to the original Shield, Nvidia’s multipurpose handheld console which boasted a built-in controller and a penchant for latency-free PC game streaming. I reviewed it and continue to evangelize it, even if it does target a somewhat niche audience due to its form factor. Tablets, of course, are a little less niche. Though the Shield had a touchscreen, its clamshell design made it excellent for gaming but a little unwieldy for typical tablet usage like web browsing or snapping photos. Nvidia should be commended for trying to innovate, but I suspect sales didn’t back up their strategy. Putting the same features (and some new ones) into a tablet with a significantly more powerful GPU? Wise move. For those not familiar with the Shield, its killer app was the ability to stream PC games from an Nvidia GeForce-powered home PC over your network or via the internet. With the recommended network environment, gaming on the couch (or in bed, or at work, or at the library) was effectively lag-free. It also boasted insanely powerful, rich sound, and a vanilla Android environment.