As part of yesterday’s Xbox One presentation, Xbox Live Vice President Mark Whitten announced that the number of downloads of the Xbox SmartGlass mobile app exceeded the milestone of 10 million.
Whitton also noted that Xbox SmartGlass will become a “native” component of Xbox One. When watching TV shows, a smartphone with the app installed will turn into a remote control. In addition, Xbox One will allow using SmartGlass to connect multiple users to the console at once for a multiplayer game or to share gaming experiences with friends on social networks (shared experiences).
And now, attention, has anything new been said? In our opinion, no. Microsoft seemed to tick the box “said about mobile integration” (repeated what was said a little less than a year ago at the launch of Xbox SmartGlass) and calmly moved on. Perhaps at E3, which will be held in June, projects will be presented that interestingly use the Xbox SmartGlass functionality, but so far it is hard to believe. Moreover, there is a fear that we will see a really close bunch of “mobile devices-consoles” only in the next generation of consoles after Xbox One and PlayStation 4, if, of course, by that time they will still be needed by someone.
The Xbox SmartGlass app was first shown at E3 2012. It is currently available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7.5 – 8.0, as well as on PC.