Nvidia Targeting Late Q2 Release for Project Shield Mobile Gaming Console

The ambitious handheld from Nvidia known as Project Shield may make its debut as early as next quarter, if everything goes to plan. CEO Jen Hsung Huang mentioned during the company's annual developer conference earlier this week that the hope is make the device available in retail outlets by the latter half of Q2 2013.

There's a slight twist, however: though other companies in the gaming market, including Sony and Microsoft, sell their products at a loss, this is not Nvidia's intention. Huang made it very clear while discussing Project Shield that the company intends to sell it for profit.

"This is a consumer electronics product," said Huang. "We'll try to be modest at first, we have no expectations and we expect you to have none, but we're going to sell it for profit."

Announced earlier this year at CES, Project Shield appears to be banking on the popularity of Android gaming. After all, it would appear from Huang's sentiments that Nvidia is hoping that Project Shield will drive developers to take advantage of the hardware and create better games for the Android platform.

For those not familiar with Project Shield, it's going to be a not-so-portable handheld device that is shaped like a controller with a 5-inch, 1280 x 720 display strapped on it. And though it will run Android OS on an Nvidia Tegra 4 processor, the console will also be able to run PC games using a home server.

Source: AMOG