Well folks, it seems NVidia has had their own Avengers SHIELD initiative going, but instead of saving the universe, it is designed to deliver a new type of handheld gaming to, well, gamers. Revealed at CES 2013, this new handheld is currently just called "Shield" but might receive a different name closer to launch.

The Shield is powered by Nvidia's Tegra 4 processor, the Tegra 4 is also Nvidia's new mobile processor that they are calling "the world's fastest mobile processor". The handheld Shield comes with a 5-inch 720p Retinal multitouch display (with a pixel density of 294ppi for the tech savvy amongst ye). It can also be connected via HDMI to an external display and is capable of outputting up to 4K resolution video, clearly planning for a long life cycle with this device. The device is said to run between five and ten hours while playing on battery (depending on the game). The battery also lasts up to 24 hours if you just watch HD video. It also features a micro-SD card expansion slot and runs Android, good news here is that it runs pure Android. This means that new updates to Android will make their way extremely fast to the Shield.

I have not yet even covered the most impressive part about the Shield, it has the capability to play games from your PC by streaming them over Wi-Fi to the Shield. While you do need at least a GeForce GTX 650 or higher to do so and this likely will be an NVidia GPU exclusive. This means you can even play Steam controller supported games on the Shield! In addition, NVidia has plans to add wireless support to stream games and videos from the Shield to your TV so you do not need to have an HDMI cable running to your Shield device when connected to TV.

No price point for the handheld has been set yet and it will be launching sometime in the second quarter of 2013 in US and Canada.