Android Is Gaming’s Future, And The One OS To Rule Them All, Says Nvidia CEO

Nvidia has some side bets on Surface and Windows RT, but Android is the really exciting OS of the future, according to CEO and co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang on an investor call today to discuss the company’s latest financial results. Huang pointed to the Shield as its means of furthering the growing Android gaming ecosystem, but games are truly only one part of the picture for Android’s bright future, he believes.

The Nvidia Shield, released earlier this year, is essentially a small Android tablet welded to a gamepad controller, creating effectively a portable Android-powered gaming console that can go toe-to-toe with the likes of Nintendo and Sony’s dedicated mobile gaming hardware. A recent software update for the Shield also improves its ability to output games content to big screens, including TVs, making it also a suitable microconsole for living room systems.

Huang’s statement is perhaps the clearest articulation of Shield’s intended purpose yet; the console is designed to provide a focal point for free-floating Android game developer ambitions, offering up a target to build for. This helps the overall gaming ecosystem, but also helps Nvidia, by prompting more developers to build experiences tailored for Tegra, its mobile system-on-a-chip, thus encouraging more Android device OEMs to look its way when building out specifications for their latest hardware.

Android’s potential goes beyond gaming into virtually every corner of connected living, however, says Huang. Tegra’s presence in automotive systems and set-top boxes, data centers, all-in-one PCs and more make it the perfect platform for the future, Huang noted, calling Google’s mobile OS “the most disruptive operating system that we’ve seen in a few decades.”

Source : TechCrunch