Did Microsoft just make Nintendo's Wii U tablet irrevelant?

[thx1139]

Adinnieken said:

thx1139 said:

There are a good deal of mis-conceptions about SmartGlass.

SmartGlass is not A App. SmartGlass is an app platform. One of the apps is the Xbox Companion that is already available today on Windows Phone and Windows 8 Release Preview. Believe it has already been announced for iOS and Android.

The Xbox Live Companion app will be enhanced with new features (like taking control of IE Xbox). In addition, game and app developers can use the platform for their own apps. For instance Halo4, Dance Central 3, Ascend New Gods and the new Karoke game will have their own apps that can be downloaded to the individual devices. They will use the SmartGlass platform API to interact with the Xbox.

MS has said that the API is HTML5 friendly so MS is making it as easy as possible for app developers to implement apps across different platforms. MS will simply provide the API to do it.

MS has also stated that up to 4 devices can be connected to the Xbox at the same time.

That depends on how you want to look at it.  To the end user, SmartGlass is an app that you download from an app store.  That's it.  That's all they have to do.

If they have the app running, then the content being fed by the console will appear on the phone or tablet.  The end user will not have to download a specific app for each application/game that supports it.  In other words, SmartGlass is a push service, not a pull service. 

I have watched a few demos.

The demo that had "School of Rock" interacting was the Paramount Pictures app.

The Halo 4 demo was a Windows 8 version Halo Waypoint.

The Dance Central app was shown on a Windows Phone as was the Ascend New Gods app.

They maybe HTML5 content pushed through the new version of the Xbox Companion, but they are apps.  The apps dont come from the Xbox. They interact with Xbox content. There is some basic stuff that the Xbox Dashboard basically understands (navigation and cursor movement), but most of the interactivity comes between the Xbox App/Xbox Game and the app on the individual devices.