NVIDIA is pushing its new Tegra 2 platform pretty hard for Android phones and tablets. While the company is still best known for making high performance PC graphics cards, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang’s recent CES presentation was entirely about Tegra 2, and the company seems pretty excited about the astronomical growth of ARM-based mobile devices.
Tegra 2 is pretty much second to none in the mobile phone 3D graphics department right now, but the way the Android Market is set up, it might be difficult for some users to find games optimized for their Tegra-based phones. So NVIDIA is launching something called Tegra Zone, which is basically the company’s own market for Android games optimized for the company’s hardware.
The Zone will feature video trailers, screenshots, and detailed descriptions — and unlike the Google Android Market, there’s no cap on the size of the apps developer can upload. Users will be able to pay for games using the same payment methods available in the Android Market.
The Tegra Zone is expected to launch next month, with 5 games including Dungeon Defenders, Fruit Ninja, and Galaxy On Fire. What’s interesting is that some of these games are already available from the Android Market, while others have iOS versions, which shows that you don’t need a Tegra 2 chip to play them. That makes sense, since right now developers are going to want to create games that can play on a variety of devices with Samsung, Qualcomm, or NVIDIA chips, among others. But if NVIDIA-powered smartphones start to sell well, we may start to see some Tegra 2-only games in the future.
via Droid Gamers
