Background and Identification
Nvidia Corporation is an American technology company based in Santa Clara, California, and founded in April 1993. Nvidia designs graphics processing units (GPUs) for the gaming and professional markets and systems on chip units (SoCs) for the automotive and mobile computing markets. Nvidia expanded its presence in the gaming industry with its handheld Shield Portable, Shield Tablet, and Shield Android TV.
The Nvidia Shield Portable (commonly called the Nvidia Shield or NSP) is a handheld video game console developed by Nvidia and first released in July 2013. Shield Portable runs on Android 5.1 (Lollipop) and features a 130mm touchscreen display with a resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels. The device is visually similar to an Xbox 360 controller and similar in control setup to a DualShock controller with two analog joysticks, a D-pad, and several other buttons. The video game console was originally called the Shield or Nvidia Shield, but since the launch of the Shield Tablet, it has been called the Shield Portable. The gaming console has undergone eight generations.
The Shield Tablet (later relaunched as the Shield Tablet K1) is a gaming tablet released by Nvidia in July 2014. The Nvidia Tablet was Nvidia’s second portable gaming device based on an Android operating system. Unlike the Shield Portable, the Tablet’s controller is not permanently connected to the screen and can be purchased separately. Up to four controllers can be wirelessly connected to the Shield Tablet at the same time.