One of the features that Nvidia’s Shield was announced to have was the ability to stream PC games to it so you can play those game on your Shield. While the short term goal was local streaming from your own PC, the long term goal is to have streaming available no matter where you are as long as you have an internet connection. This would be through Nvidia’s GRID streaming service which we’ve talked about a few times already.
However today Nvidia has announced that their short term goal is just about here for Shield owners to us. Officially called GameStream, this will allow owners who have a PC with a newer GeForce GTX card in it to stream supported PC games to their Nvidia Shield locally. This service will be launching as an OTA update on October 28th, 2013 to all Shield owners.
Right now the top 50 PC games are officially supported with GameStream although I’m sure we will be able to play a lot more than that right out of the gate. This includes games like Batman: Arkham Origins and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. Streaming should be quite nice as well since the update brings further optimization to the Shield for this feature:
– Super smooth and fast performance at 60 frames per second.
– Enhanced Wi-Fi quality of service in combination with GameStream Ready routers from leading network partners ASUS, Buffalo, D-Link, and NETGEAR.
– Improved onscreen navigation and controls.
This new streaming optimization also allows people to play Android games, browse the web, and watch their favorite movies at native 1080p on their big screen HDTV if you pair the GameStream technology up with an HDMI-out cable to your HDTV. More importantly though is that this is one step closer to Nvidia GRID cloud streaming support for the Shield. When that arrives, owners will be able to play PC games anywhere as long as they are connected to the internet.
GameStream will be arriving on October 28th, 2013 at which point NVIDIA will offer up to $100 off the purchase of a SHIELD plus free copies of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Splinter Cell Blacklist and Batman: Arkham Origins when you buy select GeForce GTX graphics cards.
Website Referenced: Nvidia Blog
