Valve has released the classic games Portal and Half Life 2 on the NVIDIA Shield. The launch comes after a partnership agreement was signed between the game developer and NVIDIA. Both games can be bought from the Google Play Store on any Android based device, but will only run on the Shield. Other devices will receive a “this app is incompatible with your device(s)” warning instead.
The NVIDIA Shield is an attempt by the PC hardware manufacturer to enter the reasonably lucrative handheld console market. However, until now it has been held back by the limitations of only being able to stream gameplay from a desktop PC (although it can still run Android apps). This does mean that owners of the Shield have been able to play both Portal and Half Life 2 since its launch.
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Porting these games over to a Tegra-4 based device could signal an interesting future for Valve; as the company has been exploring alternatives to the Windows based platform. Ars Technica has reported that Valve representatives have declined to comment on the possibility of games like Counter Strike or Left 4 Dead making the jump to the NVIDIA Shield.
[Source: Ars Technica]
