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Nvidia Shield & Tegra 4

SilverpaperplateSilverpaperplate Posts: 11Member
in General Discussion
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/7/3845282/nvidia-announces-project-shield-handheld-gaming-system


So, Nvidia announced their Tegra 4 chipset with rather impressing specs. But on top of that they also showed a mobile handheld with built-in "retinal" screen, of course with Tegra 4 and HDMI out. Software wise it is said to run untouched Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean).
The big twist is, that you can stream your games from your PC to TV via this device, and it plays along well with Steam and its Big Picture Mode.

What is your guys take on it? And what impact might it have on OUYA?
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Comments

  • nobleRobotnobleRobot Posts: 118Member
    edited January 2013
    It's going to cost a lot more than Ouya, and it needs an HDMI cable running from the "controller" in order to connect to a TV. I'd say it's not a direct competitor, although that isn't going to stop the tech and games press from mentioning OUYA in every article about it.

    I watched the livestream, and Nvidia really put on a great show (glitches and all). I don't think Shield is for me, but it's a compelling product for heavy Steam gamers, and Tegra 4 looks amazing, with its "computational photography" set to give Android phones a great innovative new feature.
    Post edited by nobleRobot on
  • tinotino Posts: 19Member
    It all comes down to price.
    Shield is in a direct competition PS Vita not OUYA.
    Although I hope OUYA will make sure they 'optimise' tegra 3 to come as close as possible to tegra 4 level of performance. 
    Since OUYA is living room console with cooling and power capabilities far better that in Vita and Shield, I hope they will come close.

  • SilverpaperplateSilverpaperplate Posts: 11Member
    Is the hardware in the dev kits final or close to final? Would be interesting to see, the performance compared to the mobile version of Tegra 3 (and compared to Tegra 4). Curious that nobody with a dev kit has run a benchmark yet...
  • KonajuGamesKonajuGames Posts: 560Member
    There won't be any real changes to the hardware before launch, but there is this message from an OUYA team member
    Remember; These are dev kits, so any figures you get shouldn't be taken as an indication of the consumer release OUYA because there'll be software tweaks and other things going between now and the time those are released.

    It is running the fastest available version of the Tegra 3 (the T33 variant).  I did see benchmarks somewhere, but so many forums threads here and elsewhere these days.
  • SpoonThumbSpoonThumb Posts: 426Member
    Nvidia Shield is closer to Gamestick; a device to get android games on the TV.

    Ouya is also that, but has the potential to be a fully fledged console. That however, depends on us, the developers, making games that fully leverage the advantages Ouya has over these rivals.

    Don't have any delusions. Both these devices are serious threats to Ouya. The window of opportunity before the next gen of consoles arrived for Christmas 2013, was always going to be short. Now, with Gamestick coming out in April and Shield rumored for a Q2 2013 release, that window has got even smaller!

    However, Ouya still has some advantages. 60k kickstarter backers plus any other pre-orders since then vs gamestick's 3k pre-orders (at time of writing) vs nothing for Shield.

    Come spring time, Ouya's will be real: plugged into tens of thousands of TV's across the world, whilst Steambox/XBox720/PS4/Gamestick/Shield will all still be so many words and photos on gaming websites

    That first mover advantage is critically important now. Ouya will have it's day and as I said before, it's really up to us now to make Ouya shine on that day!
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  • sodafountansodafountan Posts: 38Member
    I think this thing's gonna flop hard. If you look at the abysmal sales of the PlayStation Vita it should be enough to tell you that gamer's don't necessarily want high end games on a mobile device, and those that do don't want to pay such an extremely high price. 

    Now let's look at it's other main feature which is the ability to connect it to a TV via HDMI. This is a nice feature, or it would be a nice feature if you weren't forced to have that clunky screen attached to the top of your controller while you're playing. This is a terrible design flaw, now maybe it detaches (doubtful), or maybe it's very well made and you barely even notice it (we'll see, haven't gotten my hands on it, although it is NVIDIA'S first foray into this type of hardware). 

    If you want my honest opinion, I think the OUYA and the SHIELD have a bit of an identity crisis. It's like the one want's, and maybe should be, the other. While OUYA runs lower end games and has lower end hardware and of course cost less, the shield runs high end games, has better hardware, and of course will most certainly come with a hefty price tag. If you where to up the specs of the OUYA to the Tegra 4 and make it compatible with Steam then maybe the OUYA would give the next gen consoles a real run for their money. If you lowered the price of the Shield and put in weaker hardware, canned the high end games, and lower the price tag then you would give Nintendo a serious run for the money. 

    All in all I think OUYA has more appeal. It would certainly be nice if had the Tegra 4 chip though. 
  • rocketbunnyrocketbunny Posts: 46Member
    Agreed.  Tegra 4 would have made OUYA really stand out as the alpha male in the group but it also would have upped the price of the console.  Tegra 4 is pretty dammed amazing but devs haven't even had a chance to stretch the Tegra 3 to its limits yet.

    I really hope that OUYA gets a big advertising push from Boxer8 at launch and it gets traction because realistically, we need them to sell millions (if not 10's of millions) of units for devs to make money from their games.  You just have to look at Google Play and how much money devs make there and that's with many millions of devices.
    Robert Crane
    CEO, Rocket Bunny Games
  • Killa_MaakiKilla_Maaki Posts: 504Member
    I don't know if OUYA would ever upgrade (since it almost surely means a higher price tag), but I certainly would love to see someone stick a Tegra4 in there. They showed it playing Hawken, right? That wasn't just my eyes deceiving me? Because my computer can already barely play Hawken on the lowest settings (meaning if the T4 can run Hawken, it already blows my GeForce GT 440 out of the water...)
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  • BalbiBalbi Posts: 198Member
    Killa_Maaki said:
    I don't know if OUYA would ever upgrade (since it almost surely means a higher price tag), but I certainly would love to see someone stick a Tegra4 in there. They showed it playing Hawken, right? That wasn't just my eyes deceiving me? Because my computer can already barely play Hawken on the lowest settings (meaning if the T4 can run Hawken, it already blows my GeForce GT 440 out of the water...)
    Keep in mind there's a lot of trickery in the UE3 android export :) The version being played on Android is only a sliver of the quality of the PC one. My GTX680 gets like 40fps in HAWKEN hehe.
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  • DreamwriterDreamwriter Posts: 768Member
    edited January 2013

    This thing is gonna cost like $300 - 5 inch 720p screen and Tegra 4 means high prices, especially since they won't have their own store where they get a cut of the profits.  That and the fact that they didn't announce the price means it's gonna be high - they don't want people's initial excitement tempered by the cost.

    And don't believe everything they showed it playing, because remember, it can stream games from a PC so a lot of what they showed was just that.

    Post edited by Dreamwriter on
  • jasonjason Posts: 13Member
    Anandtech live-blogged the following from the Nvidia event:

    Ouya console will be one receive target for shield, wireless dongles will also be available

    I haven't read this anywhere else.  Can anyone confirm?  I think that OUYA and Shield could actually be complimentary devices.  Also, OUYA would be wise to release their framework/store to other Android devices like the Shield.  Margins on the hardware are thin so they need to be aggressive about building a thriving game/app store first and foremost.
  • VoodooDoubloonVoodooDoubloon Posts: 84Member
    +1 on seeing Ouya get the Tegra 4 chip instead of Tegra 3!

    I think Ouya decision makers should definitely let us know ASAP so we can bump up quality for the games we produce for Ouya.
  • DreamwriterDreamwriter Posts: 768Member
    They aren't going to want to wait until the end of the year to release the OUYA, spend more money totally redesigning it, or charge $200 or more for it.  And I don't want them to.  So -1 for Tegra 4 in OUYA here.
  • SilverpaperplateSilverpaperplate Posts: 11Member
    Yeah, jumping to Tegra 4 at this early point would ruin the price - which is the major selling point of OUYA. I'd rather spend 99$ again next year for OUYA2 with Tegra 4.

  • HicsyHicsy Posts: 177Member
    its not that much more powerful either. They are essentially making their own version of WiDi: http://www.intel.com.au/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/intel-wireless-display.html

    It then uses an app (im not sure if it's Via steam) to use your PC as a processor and shield acts as a thin client
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  • BadKangarooBadKangaroo Posts: 6Member
    Looking at this little clear Ouya one thing comes to mind.

    I wouldn't mind it if I could just swap out the mobo in this thing with a tegra4 version.

    I'd be cool with that as an upgrade option.
  • DreamwriterDreamwriter Posts: 768Member
    The Tegra 4 has a larger footprint, so an OUYA board based on Tegra 4 may not fit in the existing case.
  • robopadrerobopadre Posts: 1Member
    BadKangaroo said:
    Looking at this little clear Ouya one thing comes to mind.

    I wouldn't mind it if I could just swap out the mobo in this thing with a tegra4 version.

    I'd be cool with that as an upgrade option.
    I personally second this opinion. I don't know how feasible it is, but with the ability to open the device and mess around with it, I think the option to upgrade, if so desired, would be a fantastic move on OUYA's part
  • tinotino Posts: 19Member
    robopadre said:
    I personally second this opinion. I don't know how feasible it is, but with the ability to open the device and mess around with it, I think the option to upgrade, if so desired, would be a fantastic move on OUYA's part
    That would make sense.
    It would like to see upgrade board every 2-3 years (should be cheaper then buying a new console). 
    I think Tegra 4 is not realistic in 99 usd console at this point but if they can fit it in, great!
    There is no point in releasing a 150 usd console when xbox 360 is already selling for less than 200$, the price will continue to drop and we have next gen just around the corner...


  • tinotino Posts: 19Member

    Silverpaperplate     said:
    Is the hardware in the dev kits final or close to final? Would be interesting to see, the performance compared to the mobile version of Tegra 3 (and compared to Tegra 4). Curious that nobody with a dev kit has run a benchmark yet...
    Yes, it would be nice to have some numbers to talk about...
  • rocketbunnyrocketbunny Posts: 46Member
    Here is one test using the latest version of Quadrant Standard Edition:

    Total Score: 5,184
    CPU: 15,268
    Mem: 3,622
    IO: 4,604
    2D: 667
    3D: 1,757

    Other info:

    OS: 4.1.2
    CPU: ARMv7 rev 9 (v7l)
    Freq: 1600MHz
    Max Freq: 1,700 MHz
    Cores: 4
    BogoMIPS: 1987.37
    Total Mem: 986132Kb
    OpenGL: ES 2.0
    Max Texture Units: 2
    Max Texture Size: 2048
    Max Lights: 8

    A lot of benmark apps refuse to work on OUYA like GLBenchmark.

    Cheers,


    Robert Crane
    CEO, Rocket Bunny Games
  • rocketbunnyrocketbunny Posts: 46Member
    Here is another test: KFS Benchmark  (OpenGL 2 test)

    Bambo: 27.67
    Wavescape: 10.15
    Galactic Core: 41.922
    Overall: 18.926

    My Nexus 7 got an overall score of 33.57

    Obviously, OUYA has to shift more pixels because of the screen size.

    Cheers,
    Robert Crane
    CEO, Rocket Bunny Games
  • KonajuGamesKonajuGames Posts: 560Member
    What resolution are you running the OUYA in? 1080?
  • rocketbunnyrocketbunny Posts: 46Member
    One more...

    Antutu 3D Rating Benchmark v1.2.4: 

    OUYA:

    3DScore: 2,755 
    Offscreen: 1,520

    Nexus 7:

    3D: 3,112
    Offscreen: 1,155

    Cheers,
    Robert Crane
    CEO, Rocket Bunny Games
  • bennygoldbennygold Posts: 18Member
    OUYA seems like it could be the sort of console that you 'upgrade' on a yearly basis. With how fast mobile tech moves, it makes sense that OUYA 2 could be released sooner than traditional console refreshes.
  • Miniboss1232Miniboss1232 Posts: 45Member
    Yeah, since it has so many more pixels to push than a Nexus 7, that doesn't seem too surprising. We've done some tests with setting the resolution to 720p in Unity, and we go from 30 fps to 60. The OUYA just scales it up to the target resolution, so it doesn't change the output resolution (more akin to an Xbox 360 than, say, the PS3 which likes to change screen resolutions constantly).

    Personally, I'd love for the OUYA to be a console that can be updated on a more regular basis. We're already used to yearly hardware improvements on the iOS side of things. And you don't even have to buy the controllers again!

  • KonajuGamesKonajuGames Posts: 560Member
    With those benchmark comparisons, can we show tests with the OUYA using 720p.  This would be a closer comparison to the Nexus 7's 1280x800.

    Or were those benchmarks using 720p already?
  • SpoonThumbSpoonThumb Posts: 426Member
    The difference in price between buying a tegra 4 card to upgrade, vs buying a whole new Ouya is going to be so small as to be not worth it, as actually the electronics inside make up 95% of the manufacturing cost. The bits you wouldn't be upgrading (the plastic box) probably have a negligible cost anyway
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  • SilverpaperplateSilverpaperplate Posts: 11Member
    edited January 2013
    Thanks for the interesting benchmarks! Actually that is worth its own thread. Let's see how the final hardware turns out!

    (Wondering if they are working with Nvidia on optimized drivers...)
    Post edited by Silverpaperplate on
  • Jack_McslayJack_Mcslay Posts: 100Member
    Miniboss1232 said:

    Personally, I'd love for the OUYA to be a console that can be updated on a more regular basis. We're already used to yearly hardware improvements on the iOS side of things. And you don't even have to buy the controllers again!
    Two wrongs don't make a right. Having yearly updates is also a source of annoyance among iOS users of perfectly functional, unsupported devices. The gap should be of at least two years, and devs should be required to have their games functional on obsolete Ouya versions for two years after the upgraded version launches.
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