Like a creature with a thousand heads, each one asking for your attention, E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, is rumbling along. More details are emerging about Microsoft  's potentially revolutionary SmartGlass technology, there are a variety of releases pointing to other kinds of augmented reality, and Sony is showing a possible new direction for e-books.
On Tuesday evening, Microsoft demonstrated more of the features available through its new SmartGlass technology. SmartGlass enables interaction between content available through its Xbox 360 game console and related, extended content on Windows 8 computers, tablets and other smartphones.
The Multi-Screen Universe
On one level, a SmartGlass-enabled device can serve as a remote control, but, more important, it turns a variety of devices into second screens. An episode of HBO's Game of Thrones seen via Xbox Live on a TV screen, for instance, gets expanded with a corresponding interactive map of the story's location on a SmartGlass-enabled tablet . With SmartGlass, a game of Halo 4 can be augmented on a mobile device with stats, the ability to launch multiplayer sessions, and other functions.
But one of the most radical innovations, at least from the territorial Microsoft, is the ability of SmartGlass to run on iOS and Android devices as well as on Windows 8 computers and Windows Phone devices. At the moment, though, some of the additional functionality is apparently being reserved for devices running Microsoft's platforms.
The multi-screen universe, with different, simultaneous views onto the same media experience, appears to have arrived in force, after years of teases. The E3 show has generated a lot of discussion about entertainment experiences that create new kinds of ecosystems beyond the living room, or that take another step toward the fabled land of augmented reality.
Nintendo's new Wii U Gamepad, a tablet-like controller, is one example, although it is more tightly confined inside the Nintendo ecosystem than SmartGlass is in the Xbox's. There's also Sony's growing range of interactive capabilities between its portable game device Vita and its PS3 video game console, as well as new capabilities for smartphones through a new initiative called PlayStation Mobile, which offers PlayStation gaming to Android tablets.
Wonderbooks, Spiderman
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