Chipmaker
Nvidia said it will start shipping a hand-held gaming device in June, a
bid to use its appeal with PC game enthusiasts to challenge console
makers like Sony Corp and Microsoft Corp.
SHIELD,
which was announced in January and uses Nvidia's Tegra 4 mobile
processors, will be priced at $349, the company said in a release on
Tuesday.
Nvidia's graphics chips are well-known
to twenty-something fans who deck out their desktop computers with
high-end components in order to get the best out of first-person
shooters and other games.
The Santa Clara,
California company hopes some of those customers will also be drawn to
SHIELD, which has a pop-up retina display and runs the same games
available on Android tablets and smarpthones.
With
personal computer sales suffering due to a growing consumer preference
for tablets, Nvidia has staked its future on using its PC graphics
expertise to make high-performance processors for mobile devices.
Building
its own game device to showcase its processors goes a step further and
underscores the urgency of finding new markets as Nvidia faces tough
competition from Qualcomm in smartphones and tablets.
A
SHIELD feature that Nvidia has touted that can stream video games from
PCs is being offered in a test, non-official version, the company said.