During Microsoft’s presentation, Xbox SmartGlass, Microsoft’s touch/wireless content streaming feature, was confirmed.
Xbox SmartGlass releases this coming Fall and will allow users to interact with their Xbox 360 via their smartphones and tablet devices. Thankfully devices are not limited to the Windows platforms as iOS and Android devices will also be able to ‘sync’ to your Xbox 360.
Numerous ways of using SmartGlass was shown:
The first will allow the user to connect and stream their movies and music from the cloud and to the console. Continued viewing was shown, in a similar action to Netflix, user can stop a movie and continue watching at the same position from their portable device.
A second use of SmartGlass that was shown was the interaction with games. The concept demos showed how gamers could create plays in Madden through to interacting with Halo Waypoint and setting up custom games from a tablet before jumping back onto the console.
Another use of SmartGlass was navigation. This is where you could use your smartphone or tablet’s touch screen to navigate the Xbox 360 menus and the announced Internet Explorer Web Hub, Xbox’s very own web browser.
How seamless, intuitive and connected SmartGlass will be, remains to be seen. The demos shown were very early concepts for the service and I am sure there will be plenty more to polish and work on before its release later this year.
