The Future of Gaming is Android, Says Nvidia
Android is the most versatile operating system the company has known.
Given Nvidia's involvement with Valve's Steam Machines initiative, it's a little weird to hear the GeForce GPU company call Android the future of gaming. Then again, both Android and SteamOS are based on Linux, so maybe the prediction isn't quite so farfetched. The company also ignored the Windows platform with the recently-released Shield handheld console, which uses Android "Jelly Bean" even though it can stream PC games from a Windows-based, Kepler-based computer.
According to co-founder, president and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, Android is the most disruptive operating system that the company has seen in several decades. "We have some for WinRT or Surface but our focus is that going forward the vast majority of Windows on ARM will be Surface and the vast majority of everything else in Tegra is Android," he said. "Android is not just about phones."
He made the comments during a conference call with analysts following the announcement of Nvidia's third quarter financial results. He pointed out that Android resides in a number of platforms including phones, tablets, set-top boxes, games consoles, and some all-in-one PCs. He also noted that Android powers Shield.
"We believe that Android is going to be a very important platform for gaming in the future, and to do so we have to create devices that enable great gaming to happen on Android," he said. "Android is probably the most versatile operating system that we've ever known, and has the benefit of also being connected to the cloud. And so the day that you turn it on, it's incredibly useful, with all kinds of applications already on it."
In related news, Huang also said in the third quarter fiscal 2014 announcement that visual computing is increasingly important to more and more markets, that it's creating demand for GPUs and opening up large opportunities.
"The proof can be seen in the proliferation of Tegra into new verticals like automotive and set-top boxes, in our all-time high Quadro and Tesla revenues, and in the record number of customer trials for our GRID datacenter initiative," he said. "At a time when many are struggling with the decline in the mainstream PC market, our visual computing leadership has positioned us well to grow with the accelerating adoption of GPUs in the cloud and the world of connected devices."
Just recently, Nvidia and Amazon revealed G2 instances, a new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance designed for applications that require 3D graphics capabilities. The new instance is powered by Nvidia's GRID GPU with 1,536 parallel processing cores, allowing customers to build DirectX, OpenGL, CUDA and OpenCL applications and services without having to make expensive up-front capital investments.
Didn't nVidia say nice things about Apple back in the day? it looks like nVidia is the whore that'll say nice things AS LONG as they're getting paid.
When you search strategy games for android, the "top lists" are filled with games that should rightfully be advertized by a large-breasted woman asking you to come save her kingdom. They have pointless gameplay, the only purpose of which is to try to get you to buy things. The RPGs are almost all the same way.
When we start seeing GOOD turn-based strategy (as rts suffers without a mouse) or well-written RPGs, then gaming on android might become something.
For right now it's temple run and angry birds. Not impressive.
Didn't nVidia say nice things about Apple back in the day? it looks like nVidia is the whore that'll say nice things AS LONG as they're getting paid.
I think you've got it backwards. It's precisely the "in depth plot and story driven" games which in no way need PCs, fancy hardware, consoles, complex control schemes, intensive graphics, whatever. They can have extremely modest hardware overheads, simple graphics, and be awesome because they rely on good writing rather than fancy hardware to excel. These are precisely the types of games that could do great on Android with the mindless time waste twitch shooters being the ones that will have to remain on PCs and consoles.
Case in point - To the Moon. Or heck, any old RPG that people still rant and rave about today which was in no way made by fancy hardware. Plot and story driven games can and will do great on Android when devs decide to make them.
Now what's wrong with precompiled packages that you can easily instal like in Ubuntu? Well not every moron cud make his on app that is totally useless & full of adds & every app should have to be compiled for every architecture. Bat now we have much more new developer's that know how to do it thanks to Googles pore job with providing up to date Linux kernel with desirable futures we have lot of new developers that practiced with compiling.
What's wrong with having easy installable OS (in use by user) independent games that are based on stripped down Linux (only really needed things)? NV is right about one thing future of personal computing is based on small (phablet like) hi mobile devices that can be connected to anything & there for & future of gaming (no matter what OS).
When you search strategy games for android, the "top lists" are filled with games that should rightfully be advertized by a large-breasted woman asking you to come save her kingdom. They have pointless gameplay, the only purpose of which is to try to get you to buy things. The RPGs are almost all the same way.
When we start seeing GOOD turn-based strategy (as rts suffers without a mouse) or well-written RPGs, then gaming on android might become something.
For right now it's temple run and angry birds. Not impressive.
That and the fact that 90% of the games still use DirectX instead of OGL. So yea, that GPU would be near useless on Android since most games are not major games.
The biggest issue I see with this kind of rhetoric? In addition to the above, Nvidia is also taking a huge dump on their PC userbase. Just plunked down a bunch of money on a Nvidia GPU or laptop with Nvidia graphics? That's a dead-end platform, pal. Love, Nvidia.
P.S. Thanks for your money we need it to fund our Android efforts.
It's a port with with a good old portion of black humor & very playable. If someone port or remake Civ for Android let me know ...Also there are ports of legendary Final fantasy serial (3,4&5) bat they are heavy overpriced & so on...