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Opinion: I Don't Care About SmartGlass
Today Microsoft announced its new SmartGlass feature will be available for smartphones, tablets, and PCs starting on Friday. The company is heralding the technology as a revolutionary new way to interact with your digital entertainment. While some gamers are excited for its implementation, there are other mobile-focused initiatives I'm more interested in seeing.
You may remember SmartGlass as the lengthy and boring diversion from first-party games that Microsoft took during its E3 press conference. The technology allows players to use their mobile devices to interact with the 360; the examples Microsoft has highlighted thus far include displaying actor bios while watching movies, or showing where characters in HBO's Game of Thrones are on a real-time map during the show. On the gaming side of things, players can use SmartGlass to call plays and draw routes in Madden, or queue up songs in Dance Central 3.
While I can see how keeping your playbook private or sharing a dance list during a party would be useful, I find the underlying idea of juggling between a controller and a secondary screen to be an unwanted distraction to my gaming time. If I want to look at my character's stats or a map of my surroundings, I'd like to do it on the big screen I'm already playing the game on, not my phone. Also, when I'm watching a movie with someone in the dark and they start looking up something on their phone, my first instinct is to kill them – I doubt having Jack Black's filmography on hand during School of Rock (another example Microsoft showed off at E3) will do much to change my mind. The comments section of today's news story on SmartGlass was filled with similar criticisms and complaints from our readers, who question whether anyone is interested in this technology.
That's not to say I think the technology is a complete wash. In fact, I see great potential in melding smart devices and console games – I just don't want to use them simultaneously. I would, however, love to customize my XCOM soldiers and queue new research and engineering projects from my phone while I'm at work. Or grow my criminal empire in GTA V while...indisposed. Connecting to your games while you're away from them would be a great way to augment the experiences they provide, but so far all of Microsoft's SmartGlass demos have been real-time interactions between a smart device and a console game that's currently being played.
Luckily, companies such as Ubisoft are already experimenting with apps that tie into console games while you're on the go, with experiments like Project Legacy. Whether SmartGlass provides more universal support for this type of crossover remains to be seen. If it doesn't, I'll likely remain disinterested in the technology; when it comes to sitting down with a game at home, I try to minimize the distractions that come between my controller and television screen, not add to them.
What do you think of SmartGlass? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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