By Michael C.

According to the Washington Post, Google announced the release of its first tablet called the Nexus 7 on Wednesday, for $199.

The 7-inch tablet is now for sale on the Google play store and is scheduled to be shipped to the public in mid-July. Customers who purchase the Nexus 7 now will receive a $25 credit for the Play store, as well as some free subscriptions and a free copy of the latest transformers movie .According to Hugo Barra, Google’s director of product management, the Nexus 7 is optimized for Google Play.

Google’s new tablet contains a Tegra 3 quad-core processor and a 12-core general processing unit which will provide optimal performance when watching movies, playing games and will speed up overall functions. The tablet has been built with a 1280×800 and according to the Washington post Google has stated that the tablet provides approximately nine hours of battery life.

The Nexus 7 is being released in a $199 version that has 8GB of memory and a $249 version that has 16GB of memory. The tablet has one micros USB port, runs the new Android Jelly Bean system and has 1GB of RAM. It also has a built in microphone, an NFC chip that works with Google’s Android Beam services, a GPS and an accelerometer.

According to the Washington post, Engineering director Chris Yerga showed off the tablet’s display for books and magazine which will let users choose between the normal print format and a tablet-optimized layout. Yerga also displayed the tablets video playback system and its recommendation engine.

The tablet has been designed with nearly all of Google’s products integrated into the device. Yerga demonstrated how they have used many of Google’s software products, such as Google maps and Google translate to improve the users experience with the tablet.

Yerga also showcased the Nexus 7’s gaming capabilities which he said will revolutionize the mobile gaming experience. According to the Washington post the tablets graphics capabilities look impressive for a mobile device and game developers will have fun designing more complex and richer gaming experiences for the Nexus 7’s advanced gaming capabilities.