Nvidia’s GRID platform wasn’t announced at CES; it was announced in mid-2012. However, CES is the first time the public has been exposed to how it performs in real life. The company showed off many new products, most notably its Project Shield hardware at its booth at CES. We got to go hands on and play GRID compatible games on an Acer Ultrabook, LG Smart TV, ASUS Nexus 7 and HTC One X.
Nvidia is allowing gamers to play intensive games usually reserved for top-notch PCs on any device, no matter if it’s a smart TV, tablet or smartphone. This works by the Nvidia GRID servers rendering games in the cloud and streaming the video to your device. To get started, all you have to do is open the GRID app and select the game you want to play. Once the game opens, you play it just like you would on your PC, and it works well, too! The gameplay was virtually flawless across all of the devices Nvidia had in the booth, which included an Acer Ultrabook, LG Smart TV, Asus Nexus 7 and HTC One X.
Since you’re playing a PC game, touch input will not work, so you’ll have to connect a USB gamepad to your device. I caught myself trying to select options with my fingers once or twice instead of the gamepad. Nvidia reps said they might add touch functionality in the future, but did not elaborate any further.
The quality of the games will largely depend on the speed of your Internet. If you are able to play reliably on Xbox Live, you should have no issue streaming games via Nvidia GRID.
