Brandon Sheffield offers a cool interview with Tim Sweeney at Gamasura. one bit struck me hard:
“when you take that device and broadcast that image to the TV, then suddenly you just have a big, flat mouse-like surface.”
– for some reason this got me excited about the exact opposite experience: controlling your mobile device(s) with your console’s controller.
How cool would it be to have game that encourages you to lay out your tablets and phones so you can see them, and then has the game’s focus jump among them all – so you just hold the wireless controller? I imagine mario running off your tv screen, and you have to look around to see which screen he’s appeared on.
(+imagine a game that let you control a wildly different game on your tablet, with the same controller output that you’re sending to your main console? gears on the screen, mario on the tablet. it’d just be funny and weird)
(+ imagine instantly shifting your button mashing focus to a side game on your tablet, because the main game is loading)
(+ imagine a game that encouraged a second player to hold up screens for you, to help out. maybe rotating and moving them as well.)
we mostly think about SmartGlass as a slow response supplement, like those damnable bluray movie tie-in apps.
but would it be possible to enable your “other device” to directly pick up a wireless controller’s signal?
(how far from being bluetooth devices are these console controllers?)
… I dimly recall some mysterious magic around xbox controllers or systems having a “proprietary chip” (or whatever magic) that made it near-impossible to create your own wireless controller for the system. But I’m curious if it’d be possible for a smartglass app to enable direct communication with tablet or phone.