Tech Focus: Second Screen Gaming

Digital Foundry takes a look at SmartGlass, the Wii U GamePad and the PS3/Vita connection.
Eight years after the release of the Nintendo DS, it seems that all three major platform holders now believe that dual-screen gaming is an integral part of the future of console gaming. At E3 this year, we saw the launch line-up for the new twin-screen Wii U, an announcement for smartphone/tablet support from Microsoft in the form of the SmartGlass initiative, while Sony offered up some interesting new integration ideas for PlayStation 3 and the PS Vita handheld.
The move towards dual-screen functionality is most likely prompted by a number of factors. Firstly there's a growing belief that gaming is moving away from the living room TV and towards discrete screens per player. It's an idea fuelled by the amount of time that people are spending using their mobile devices in the home, not just outside of it. Secondly, with the heavily rumoured Apple TV display just around the corner, we can almost certainly expect to see a greater level of convergence between the Cupertino giant's devices and there's a definite sense that the established forces in the games industry don't want to be caught off-guard in embracing the ideas this represents. Finally, for Sony at least, it represents a big opportunity to sell Vita to its mammoth PS3 installed base.
"The Wii U GamePad is the star of the second screen movement, but Microsoft SmartGlass and the PS3/Vita hook-up each have their own specific charms. It's all a question of take-up."

The very different approaches we see from Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony are intriguing. Each implementation appears to have its own relative strengths and weaknesses, but it's clear that in Wii U, Nintendo is very much in the driving seat. The advantages of its tech are numerous - the most strikingly obvious being that every single Wii U owner will possess the requisite technology out of the box, meaning that developers can concentrate their efforts on supporting the tablet knowing that it will reach every owner of the console.
There are also the fundamental strengths of the technology itself. There's a latency free connection between the tablet controller and the console, so game control is as fast and fluid as a conventional joypad (something you can't say for Apple's AirPlay) and the ability to mirror HDTV gameplay onto the tablet screen is an excellent ace-in-the-hole. For the first time, console gaming needn't encroach on regular TV viewing - the action can be switched between the main screen and the tablet simply and quickly.
Nintendo describe the tablet video feed as being latency free - something we were dying to try out. At a recent press event in London, we had the ability to film both tablet and screen simultaneously, and found that with mirrored content, the tablet actually received a fresh image up to seven frames - or 116ms - earlier than the LG HDTVs to which the Wii U was connected. This may suggest that the main displays were hopelessly laggy of course, and we need to factor in that the dev Wii U hardware was tethered to the unit (the suggestion being that AV data may have been beamed across from it) but even in a simple wired HDMI vs. tether contest, the results are still highly revealing about how seriously Nintendo is taking latency. WHDI technology operates with 1ms lag, and if Nintendo has opted for this solution, there should be no problem at all in this regard.

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