Microsoft's Smart Glass: What do you think?

In order to be an equal opportunity basher and praiser, I'm doing a Microsoft story.   At E3 2012, Microsoft "announced" their entrance into the handheld market with the announcement of X-Box Smart Glass.  While the announcement was interesting, most people were pretty "meh" about the addition.  I personally look at the most long term uses for this technology.  

Let's first look at the Kinect.  No, I won't go into how Microsoft used the past few E3's (before this one) to shove this little gem down our throats.  Instead I want to get into the long term possibilities.  Now, anyone who has known me for a significant amount of time will tell you I personally don't care for this forced attempt at getting us into motion gaming (I'm sure that will be a nice long post sometime).  There are other uses this technology has though, many more than I could possibly think of.  However, when it comes to entertainment, imagine a TV fully integrated with Kinect, allowing the TV's interface to allow menu interface with a swipe of your hand, or using a full variety of voice commands.  Yes, while motion gaming isn't exactly something I would consider to be a "must have" thing, I do believe in the long term uses in Kinect, and we've only scratched the surface here.

So now we have SmartGlass, and the real positive here for Microsoft, is that they are not requiring you to purchase a new X-Box peripheral.  If you're already sporting an iPad (which I, luckily, am), you can use that to sync up to your X-Box 360 for to use these features.  The impact this will have on gaming is minor, at best.  I don't really know how many people are itching to see their Halo online profiles as they barrel through Halo 4 in November.  However, I do see the impact on other parts of entertainment.  

Microsoft showed the Game of Thrones SmartGlass feature, which I found to be different, but not particularly imaginative.  Let's give them the benefit of the doubt though, this was probably an early on idea.  Let's look at what it could actually do that would be useful?  How about if you're watching a football game, and as the game is taking place, your tablet keeps up with the stats in real time?  How about if a big play happens in another game, your tablet gives you the opportunity to flip to that game to see the replay?  Or how about if you're watching a movie, the tablet will do a pop up video of how certain scenes were shot, or interviews with the director?  Possibly using your tablet as a Netflix browser, and with a shift of your finger, it appears on the TV?  SmartGlass has far bigger uses than just gaming, and I'm looking forward to seeing what people much smarter than I am will be able to come up with.   

 While there are thousands of rumors out there about the neXt Box, I don't believe Microsoft will make all that much of a stink about the hardware as much as they will stress on X-Box Live and the integration you will have with your Kinect or tablet.  Certainly, it'll be strong, and play some seriously good games, but I really think they are moving more towards the "top box" theory.  This means that they will be working more on signing more cable companies and networks to support the X-Box to, well, basically replace your cable box.  I could be wrong.  I've certainly been wrong before.  This time though, I think Microsoft is heading in that direction.