Nvidia announced today that Project Shield is now simply called Shield. The GPU maker also announced that it would be available this June for $350. For the price, you’ll be getting what is essentially a luxury item among Android devices.

So, has anything changed from when Nvidia first announced the device? Not at all. Here’s the full spec sheet from Nvidia:

The high specs make for a device that will be able to handle pretty much anything developers can throw at it. In fact, Nvidia has lined up a few major titles for its new handheld, including Double Fine’s Broken Age and Costume Quest. The former will also be available on the competing Ouya Android console, but the latter will be making its Android debut on Shield.

Shield is available for pre-order now for those who are on Nvidia’s mailing list. For everybody else, pre-orders will open on May 20 on Nvidia’s online store as well as Newegg, GameStop, Micro Center and Canada Computers.

Sources told Reuters that the Asustek-made Nexus 7 successor will be launching in July. If true, the next Nexus 7 will be launching a year after its predecessor hit the scene. It would also give Google plenty of time to build up excitement for the tablet after a reveal at Google I/O.

As for specs, Reuters’ sources say the tablet will indeed be ditching Nvidia’s Tegra CPU in favor of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon. The previous rumor said Google chose Snapdragon because Qualcomm gave the company a better deal, but this latest report chalks it up “power reasons.”

Beyond a change in CPU manufacturer, the report also says that the new tablet will feature a higher resolution and a thinner bezel design, both of which suggest that we may see a larger screen in the Nexus 7 as well.

Apple lambasted the Nexus 7 last year during its iPad Mini reveal event for having a smaller display, while conveniently failing to mention that Google’s tablet still had a higher resolution. The new Nexus 7 could give Google a chance to create a tablet with a higher resolution while matching the 7.9-inch display of the iPad Mini.

We’re sure to hear more details on the new Nexus 7, including its assumed use of a new Android operating system, at Google I/O or soon after.

Pacific Crest analyst Michael McConnell recently said that the next-generation Nexus 7 will be ditching Nvidia’s Tegra chip in favor of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro. The change in processor appears to be motivated by Qualcomm offering Google a better deal, as well as the S4 Pro featuring better integration with 3G/4G modem technologies.

So, what does this mean for Nvidia? We’ve already heard rumors that OEMs were not committed to Tegra 4, and that Nvidia’s new mobile chip might be facing a hard time with adoption. At the time, I said the next-generation Nexus 7 may help the Tegra 4 get a leg up on the competition, but that may not be the case anymore. As for its financial impact, McConnell says that Nvidia stands to lose about $200 to $250 million if its booted out of the Nexus line.

Still, all of this is rumor for now, and we won’t know anything for sure until the next-generation Nexus 7 is officially announced. When will that announcement be? McConnell backs up previous rumors by saying it will be announced at Google I/O in May, and start shipping shortly after.

[h/t: ZDNet]

In what Nvidia is dubbing PC Mondays, the company will be showing a PC game running on Project SHIELD every week for the foreseeable future. This week’s game is Borderlands 2 – one of the best PC ports of last year. The title looks absolutely glorious on my 1680×1050 monitor, but how does the game perform on a tiny 5-inch screen? Check out Nvidia’s demo to find out:

Borderlands 2 seems to perform just fine on Project SHIELD. Nvidia notes that games will stream at 60 FPS with no noticeable degradation in quality. The only caveat is that the game is on a smaller screen which means that some less pronounced details may not be as readily apparent as they are on a larger screen.

Alongside PC Mondays, Nvidia will also be putting up a new video every Thursday showing an Android game running on Project SHIELD. It will be interesting to see if any developers take advantage of the increased power available to them on Project SHIELD for their Android titles.

Digitimes reports that demand for Nvidia’s Tegra 4 processor has been weak among OEMs. In fact, the only OEM confirmed to use the processor so far is Toshiba. The other major players, like Asus and Acer, are reportedly still undecided on which processors they will be using:

Asustek Computer and Acer, which have been aggressive about the tablet market, have not yet decided whether to place orders for Tegra 4 as their focuses have already turned from 10-inch and above tablets to the 7-inch entry-level segment.

Nvidia’s previous mobile processor – the Tegra 3 – is being used in devices like Google’s Nexus 7 and Microsoft’s Surface. It still enjoys relative popularity among OEMs so Nvidia may start focusing more on its previous generation processor while it waits for Tegra 4 demand to increase. To do this, the company is reportedly considering dropping the price of the Tegra 3 so that more OEMs start using it.

Relying on the Tegra 3 is only a temporary solution, however, as Nvidia needs to kickstart Tegra 4 demand. It may be able to do this by working with Google again on the Nexus 7 refresh that’s rumored to becoming later this year. Having the Tegra 4 in such a high profile device would only help Nvidia’s case.

Of course, all of this is rumor for now, and Tegra 4 devices won’t even start popping up until later this year. Nvidia still has some time to get people behind its latest mobile processor.

Now, all of us can’t be at CES, but Nvidia has deemed it proper to give us all a tour of its massive booth. From the booth, you can see all the new products the company is bringing to PC gaming, including GRID and Nvidia Experience. The former is Nvidia’s take on cloud gaming, while the latter is new software that will help inexperienced PC gamers get the most out of their machine without having to edit video settings.

The company also showed that it was not afraid to branch out of the PC gaming market. There were multiple smart cars on display that had touchscreen interfaces powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 4 processors. The Tegra 4 is also found in Nvidia’s new gaming handheld – Project SHIELD. It will play all the latest and greatest Android games as well as stream PC games to the handheld using GRID.

All in all, Nvidia had one of the strongest showings at the annual tech show. All of the products it showed may not be successful in the future, but they’re at least really interesting.

As an added bonus, here’s a more detailed look at Project SHIELD:

Over the course of an hour and 45 minutes, Nvidia announced a number of new products. The most surprising was Project SHIELD, a portable gaming machine that runs Android. It can also stream PC games from any Nvidia GTX powered machine.

The company also announced its latest generation mobile CPU – the Tegra 4. The company hailed it as the fastest mobile processor on the planet, and showed off what it can do for the future of mobile gaming.

Finally, the company announced its plans to enter the cloud gaming space with GRID. Nvidia has built massive servers that will deliver games over the cloud to gamers around the world. It will also lease these servers out to other companies who want to provide cloud services to consumers.

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Nvidia’s new portable device is called Project SHIELD. It’s a 5-inch 720p retina display attached to a console-quality controller. The device is powered by Nvidia’s new Tegra 4 mobile processor so it can push the latest and greatest mobile graphics. Project SHIELD offers the extra benefit of being able to stream content from a PC so players can enjoy their Steam library on the go.

“Project SHIELD was created by Nvidia engineers who love to game and imagined a new way to play,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia. “We were inspired by a vision that the rise of mobile and cloud technologies will free us from our boxes, letting us game anywhere, on any screen. We imagined a device that would do for games what the iPod and Kindle have done for music and books, letting us play in a cool new way. We hope other gamers love SHIELD as much as we do.”

With Project SHIELD, it looks like Nvidia is ready to compete with other dedicated Android gaming systems like Ouya, which is powered by Nvidia’s older Tegra 3 processor. Unlike Ouya, however, SHIELD remains portable while also being able to play the latest PC games through a GTX equipped PC. It’s an interesting product for sure, but it remains to be seen if Nvidia is making the right move here. Do PC gamers, the obvious target audience for this device, want to play their PC games on a 5-inch screen when they could play them on their 1920×1080 monitor?

Either way, we won’t know for sure until later this year. Nvidia says that Project SHIELD is expected to launch in Q2 of 2013. There was no mention of price either, but don’t expect it to be cheap. I’d ballpark it in the $400 range, but Nvidia could surprise with a lower price point if it’s really serious about getting this into the hands of PC gamers.

Back in April, Nvidia teased the first details of its GeForce Experience software. The program seeks to automatically optimize any PC game for each user’s unique system. Most PC games already offer an option that automatically picks out the optimum settings based on a user’s system, but said options are woefully inaccurate. GeForce Experience uses a massive supercomputer that tests every possible configuration to give gamers the best possible experience.

A lot of seasoned PC gamers will probably not get much use out of this software, but it’s not necessarily built for them. PC gaming has exploded over the past few years, and more people than ever are gaming on pre-built PCs and laptops. These people may automatically just assume that a game runs without every actually tweaking settings and .ini files. The GeForce Experience is for them.

As for the rest of us, you should check it out if only for the automatic driver updates. Nvidia is pretty awesome about staying on top of frequent driver updates, but you may forget to check every once in a while when a new one is made available. With GeForce Experience, PC gamers will never miss a driver update again.

The GeForce Experience is currently available in a closed beta that’s open to the first 10,000 participants. You can download it here. Get to it before it’s gone.

Nvidia released the new GeForce R310 drivers today for Linux operating systems. The GPU manufacturer said that the new Linux drivers “double the performance and dramatically reduce game loading times” for games on Linux.

The drivers had apparently been in development for almost a year with Nvidia, Valve and other game companies helping to optimize them for the release of Steam on Linux. Valve’s Doug Lombardi even had some nice things to say about it:

“With this release, Nvidia has managed to increase the overall gaming performance under Linux,” said Doug Lombardi, vice president of marketing at Valve. “Nvidia took an unquestioned leadership position developing R310 drivers with us and other studios to provide an absolutely unequalled solution for Linux gamers.”

The new R310 drivers support the newest generation of Nvidia GPUs – the GeForce 600 line. Users with Nvidia-equipped Linux systems are still encouraged to download the drivers as it includes support to all GPUs from the 8800 GT and above.

Linux users can grab the latest drivers here.