Nvidia representatives confirmed to Ars that the ports were handled entirely in-house by Nvidia as opposed to Valve doing the porting. Rather, these two ports run natively on the Shield's Tegra 4-powered hardware-and are possibly the two highest-profile 3D games to see such a Shield launch yet. Nvidia's $199 gaming portable can already stream gameplay from a home computer, so this technically isn't the true debut of Valve games on the Shield.

At that time, Nvidia representatives refused to openly acknowledge Half-Life 2 as an Nvidia Shield possibility, saying to Ars, 'We announced that we’re bringing Portal to Shield but are not discussing additional devices and/or device requirements at this time.' This follows a promotional stunt from last week in which various gaming news outlets received Nvidia-green crowbars labeled 'What would Gordon do?' next to a small Nvidia Shield logo. They have launched at $9.99 each under the 'Nvidia Tegra Partners' developer listing as opposed to a dedicated Valve Software heading, but they still mark the game maker's Android debut. The launch follows a partnership announcement from the two companies in March, and while the original, announced plan was for Portal to launch by itself, Half-Life 2 showed up on the Google Play store today as well.īoth games can currently be found on Google's online shop, but unless you make the purchase on an Nvidia Shield, Google will warn you that 'this app is incompatible with your device(s),' as the games have been designed exclusively for Nvidia Shield hardware.

Today, Valve Software and Nvidia launched ports of classic PC games Half-Life 2 and Portal on the portable, Android-backed Nvidia Shield game system.

Half life 2 play store