NVIDIA Acquires TransGaming Tech To Boost Android Gaming

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA Acquires TransGaming To Boost Android Gaming

NVIDIA has acquired the Graphics and Portability Group (GPG) of TransGaming, the company formerly responsible for the Wine-based Cedega software along with Cedar and other porting technologies...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Acquires-TransGaming-GPG

[dimko]

Very interesting news Michael.
Thank you.

[schmidtbag]

I'm definitely interested to hear more about what happens to this.

[johnc]

NVIDIA is definitely trying to push Android gaming -- and somebody has to for it to take off -- and I don't see any other companies stepping up to the task. (I'm still trying to gauge Google's interest in gaming. They seem... quiet.)

The downside is that any ports will certainly be locked into the Shield ecosystem.

[CrystalGamma]

NVIDIA is definitely trying to push Android gaming -- and somebody has to for it to take off -- and I don't see any other companies stepping up to the task. (I'm still trying to gauge Google's interest in gaming. They seem... quiet.)

The downside is that any ports will certainly be locked into the Shield ecosystem.

Do you mean non-casual gaming? Because gaming in general is already very viable and very contended on Android ...

[schmidtbag]

NVIDIA is definitely trying to push Android gaming -- and somebody has to for it to take off -- and I don't see any other companies stepping up to the task. (I'm still trying to gauge Google's interest in gaming. They seem... quiet.)

The downside is that any ports will certainly be locked into the Shield ecosystem.

Well who else would be interested in doing it? To my knowledge, nobody comes close to nvidia's GPU performance, pretty much every android console there is uses nvidia, and no other ARM manufacturer seems interested in Android gaming systems. So it really is nvidia's responsibility to make sure it gets somewhere.

[belal1]

Gaming on Android is very viable. The problem is that casual games are the cream of the crop for Android. And why wouldn't it be, they work on mostly all devices, cheap and expensive. But we are talking about more sophisticated games, graphics intensive games, games that actually use game engines like unity or UE.

I just hope nvidia wins. I know, I know, Personally I like AMD when it comes to an nvidia vs amd agenda, but when it comes to nvidia vs anyone else, I am compelled to think that nvidia is tapping into a segment that has been stagnant and like others have said, no one else seems to take full swing into. You have to support nvidia here. Sure there were the Ouya, Gamestick, heck even Fire TV recently, but none of them seems to have made an impact where we can compare to the big three consoles.

[johnc]

Traditionally Android gaming was limited by the fact that the target devices were either power and thermal limited (tablets and phones), or the chips were necessarily small (Ouya).

Remove the power limitation and if a large chip can be fabricated without too many technical hurdles, then yeah, Android moves beyond the Candy Crush type games to more like the modern AAA games.

And Jen-Hsun is on the record as saying that the future of gaming is ... not Windows, not PlayStation ... but Android. And while that seems a bit off-kilter to me in 2015, it does indicate a part of the company's vision.

[nightmarex]

My sisters boyfriend has a shield, and it's pretty crappy to game on the tiny screen however i do like the controller, here's the catch tho, by the time you buy a shield and hook it into a TV since gaming on it's small screen is pretty lame... you got yourself a system that's ~$99 us dollars cheaper than a ps4... the thing literally has no place other than portable the only reason he got one is he games at work since he has many hours of downtime a day. Now 2 years from now the phones will probably outgame the damn thing so I really don't see the point. However on topic, I wonder if this is really about the shield. Will have to keep an eye on this.

[johnc]

My sisters boyfriend has a shield, and it's pretty crappy to game on the tiny screen however i do like the controller, here's the catch tho, by the time you buy a shield and hook it into a TV since gaming on it's small screen is pretty lame... you got yourself a system that's ~$99 us dollars cheaper than a ps4... the thing literally has no place other than portable the only reason he got one is he games at work since he has many hours of downtime a day. Now 2 years from now the phones will probably outgame the damn thing so I really don't see the point. However on topic, I wonder if this is really about the shield. Will have to keep an eye on this.

Well there is a Shield set top box for Android TV now.

Throw maybe 10 Maxwell SMs on the chip and you have a legit console competitor on an open platform.