Project Shield attracts interest from Hawken dev, Epic and Ubisoft

Project Shield, Nvidia's Tegra 4-powered, Android-based portable console announced at CES 2013 yesterday, has already attracted interest and praise from some big names.

Although Nvidia hasn't confirmed any games from either company, both Epic and Ubisoft supplied comment for a press release accompanying the announcement.

Epic's Mark Rein said Project Shield is "an uncompromising, high-performance console experience" for mobile devices, pinting out that Hawken and Real Boxing both utilise the Unreal Engine and "look fantastic" on the portable.

"This is just the beginning, and we're truly excited to see what more Unreal Engine developers will do with so much horsepower in such a compact gaming device," he added.

“Ubisoft is always excited about new hardware developments," CEO Yves Guillemot, added, "and Project Shield promises to bring both mobile and PC gamers a great new gaming experience. Seeing the PC version of Assassin’s Creed III run on the device is a great example of this, and further strengthens Ubisoft’s long-standing relationship with Nvdia.”

Hawken publisher Meteor Games said that Project Shield is a natural extension to PC development as it's an open platform.

Nvidia told Kotaku that Hawken developer Adhesive Games got a Project Shield prototype before Christmas, and has spent the past few weeks building a Tegra-powered version for the CES 2013 demonstration, which wowed onlookers.

The manufacturer said this Android version of Hawken is exclusive to Tegra 4, and may be exclusive to Project Shield.

This real-time demo of Project Shield in action is pretty impressive; Pat's so swayed by the device, which also streams PC games, that he thinks this is the year PC gaming disrupts the console cycle.