Tomb Raider Rolls Out For The SHIELD, Plus More Games Likely To Linux

Tomb Raider along with other Square Enix games are coming to NVIDIA's SHIELD platform via GeForce NOW, which should be as exciting to you as a Linux gamer.

There are surely many Phoronix readers out there using the Android-powered Shield TV, Shield Tablet, or Shield Portable given they are high-end Android devices, but it gets better than that. As you may recall, all the recent talk about Tomb Raider coming to Linux.

For the uninitiated, GeForce NOW is NVIDIA's cloud gaming service for streaming games to the SHIELD devices at 1080p @ 60 FPS. With this online game streaming service, all the tough work is done server-side and then sent down to these lower-power Tegra-based NVIDIA devices in real-time. As with most cloud environments or servers for that matter, at the heart of NOW is Linux (unfortunately I don't know of any public stats indicating the percentage of Linux servers powering GeForce NOW or if in fact it's all now Linux based), and in turn for those environments relying upon Linux ported games.

A majority of the GeForce NOW games are Linux-native titles, among them are Massive Chalice, Metro 2033 Redux, Metro Last Light Redux, Trine 3, Saints Row, Grim Fandango Remastered, etc. For the few games that don't have native Linux versions, like LEGO Hobbit and a few others, I haven't heard whether GeForce NOW is relying upon non-public Linux ports, Windows VMs, or what sort of technical implementation for running those games on their cloud streaming service, but arguably the greatest likelihood is relying upon unreleased Linux ports, as the game developers need to modify their titles anyways for conforming to running on the GeForce NOW platform.

With this morning's announcement, Tomb Raider is immediately available for NVIDIA SHIELD device owners paying for GeForce NOW (currently $7.99 USD per month) while other games will follow. The companies have confirmed that Tomb Raider will be trailed by other Square Enix titles including Sleeping Dogs, Lara Croft Guardian of the Light, Quantum Conundrum, and Murdered Soul Suspect. Details on today's announcements via the NVIDIA blog. We know that Tomb Raider is coming to Linux desktop proper via Steam, but let's hope these other titles do as well, which isn't much of a stretch. Square Enix is also responsible for the Hitman and Final Fantasy series, among others.