Nintendo teams up with Nvidia to bring Wii and GameCube games to China

Nvidia is bringing the Shield to China and it’s teaming up with Nintendo to make it a platform for Wii and GameCube games in the country.

The announcement was made by Niko Partners analyst, Daniel Ahmad, who tweeted that the Shield would have a focus on games in China, and will be capable of running popular PC and Nintendo titles.

Already, Nvidia has confirmed that The New Super Mario Bros Wii and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess are available to play on the Shield in remastered 1080p with other titles such as Super Mario Galaxy planned for the future.

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Ahmad also posted footage of titles running on the Shield, adding that the device costs RMB 1499 (£169 / $226 /AU$300) while Nintendo games cost RMB 68 (around £8 / $10 / AU$13). We’re not jealous at all.

It’s unlikely that the partnership will ever expand beyond China as it’s simply a fast and low risk way for Nintendo to enter the Chinese market and give its games a foothold.

Given that the Shield runs on the same Tegra chip as the Nintendo Switch, it’ll be interesting to see whether Nintendo eventually allows recent Switch games to be emulated on the Shield in China if these older emulations prove to be popular.

If it did, it’s even more certain that the ports would never expand beyond the localized Chinese Shield store. Because of the similar components between the Switch an the Shield this does, however, give further precedent for a virtual console on the Switch that will play these older games.