NVIDIA’s SHIELD TV was first released in 2015 followed by a refresh in 2017 and till this day, it’s the GPU maker’s most powerful Android TV box cum game streaming machine. Now, thanks to some diligent individuals over at XDA, it appears that NVIDIA could actually be working on a new SHIELD TV device.
The discovered device goes by the codename “mdarcy” – the current SHIELD TV’s codename is “darcy” – was found under the Google Play Developer Console’s Device Catalog. At a glance of the spec sheet, the new device doesn’t look that much different from its predecessor. Upon closer inspection, though, you’ll notice that the new “mdarcy” device has been certified to run Android 9 Pie.
On top of that, the Tegra X1 SoC listed on the spec sheet of “mdarcy” seems to be a slightly more power efficient variant of the original Tegra X1, and features a higher GPU clockspeed as well. Further, there’s also the new SHIELD controller that NVIDIA has also working on, so it’s likely that this new console will ship out with completely new gear too.
Beyond that, there isn’t a whole lot of details being divulged on the site. Of course, NVIDIA has yet to acknowledge the existence of this device, so it would be best to maintain a level of scepticism about this until it does.
