Microsoft is expected to host an Xbox Live event at E3 in a few hours’ time, and it seems that if you were planning on tuning in, one particular feature that Microsoft could be announcing is the “Xbox Live Companion”. This was reported by the folks at Kotaku who has learnt from a reliable source that the Xbox Live Companion is basically a system that allows developers of Xbox 360 console games to stream content directly onto your smartphone or tablet. Now if you have been following game news, you might have heard of “Smart Glass” by Microsoft.
According to the rumor, Smart Glass is supposedly a feature related to touchscreen technology (as opposed to a wearable device like Google’s Project Glass) and according to Kotaku’s source, Smart Glass is actually the internal name given to the Xbox Live Companion. So what does it do? Well the Xbox Live Companion will be an app available on iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices. Developers of games for the Xbox 360 will then be given the option of coding in features that allows the game to send content to the app while the game is running, thus transforming it into a “companion”.
If you’ve ever played a Nintendo DS or any of its successors, then you could think of the Xbox Live Companion to be the secondary display for the console. It can be used to display a variety of content, such as maps, status screens or whatever feature the developer plans to include.
As the folks at Kotaku have pointed out, this could work out incredibly well since many consumers already own the necessary devices (i.e. smartphones) and with iOS and Android taking up a chunk of the marketshare, the Xbox Live Companion does have the potential to take off in a big way. Either way we will be taking this with a grain of salt for now and be sure to tune in later as we will be covering the news for E3.