NVIDIA Announces Launch Date For Lollipop 5.0 On SHIELD Tablet & ‘Green Box’ Bundle, Makes GRID Cloud Gaming Service Official

Geez – where to begin? NVIDIA has absolutely inundated us with news today, so let’s start from the top.

SHIELD Tablet owners will be pleased to know that Android 5.0, aka: Lollipop, will be hitting their devices this coming Tuesday (the 18th). The OS update in itself is major, because it brings a lot of great features and enhancements to the table, but making the entire package just a wee bit better, NVIDIA will be rolling out new SHIELD Hub and Dabbler apps on the same day. The 18th is going to be a very good day to be a SHIELD Tablet owner.

When NVIDIA ported Valve’s Portal over to its SHIELD platform earlier this year, there were many reasons to be impressed or excited. Portal is a full-blown PC game, after all, and it works great even on the handheld SHIELD. Not long after, the company surprised us with another Valve classic, Half-Life 2. Likewise, that game runs well on the SHIELD portable, and is enhanced on the SHIELD Tablet. Well, NVIDIA apparently has no interest in slowing-down: The company’s now bringing Half-Life 2: Episode One to the SHIELD platform.

Half-Life 2 on the SHIELD Tablet

Given this Episode One release, I am not sure we should be too surprised when the company announces that it’s brought Episode Two to the platform as well – it’s just going to happen. Or maybe it won’t, because NVIDIA works in very mysterious ways sometimes. Maybe the company will just troll us and release Ricochet instead.

Nonetheless, those folks planning to pick up the 32GB/LTE version of the SHIELD Tablet are in for a treat: All three titles will be included for free. This is part of what NVIDIA’s calling the Green Box bundle, which is a throwback to the Orange Box that Valve released which included Half-Life 2, its two episodes, Portal, and… Team Fortress 2. Wait a minute – could that be next-in-line here?

Alright, I’m too damn excited here. But can you blame me? Come Tuesday, I’ll be licking a virtual lollipop!

Finally, today’s the day that NVIDIA makes its GRID cloud gaming service official. It’s been in beta for quite some time, and coincidently, I just tested it out again last night (which is when I took the below screenshot). Despite the fact that I’m on the opposite side of the continent from where the servers are located, lag has never been an issue throughout all of my tests. I’d assume that with this announcement, NVIDIA’s rolled-out more servers nationwide, but nothing’s been confirmed as of yet.

Until July 2015, GRID is completely free to any SHIELD owner, with pricing after that up-in-the-air at the moment. There’s a large selection of games to play on the service right now, including Borderlands 2 as seen in the shot above, and NVIDIA promises to introduce more every single week. If you own a SHIELD, have a good Internet connection, and haven’t given GRID a try, what are you waiting for?

Overall, this is one heck of an update from NVIDIA.