It's actually a very nifty technology, but during the SmartGlass session, Microsoft essentially told small, indie developers that SmartGlass won't be part of their roadmaps.

Neil Black, Principal Program Manager in the Xbox Live group, walked attendees through various scenarios for the app, and discussed current and upcoming title support. Halo 4 support had been revealed earlier this year at E3, but on Friday Black dipped into Forza Horizons, a new racing game that uses SmartGlass to show interactive maps, and even allows players to set waypoints, creating a GPS route inside the game.

Other games destined to receive the SmartGlass treatment include Dance Central 3 and Home Run Stars. Large scale content providers, including NBC TV will also be supporting the app.

Black walked through a high-level overview of the SmartGlass architecture, which depends heavily on Xbox 360's Live cloud service. SmartGlass experiences are created using standard HTML 5 and JavaScript. Almost all of the functionality for device access is embedded in a Microsoft-provided JavaScript library.

Full support for the various sensors in new-generation PCs and smart devices open up interesting interface possibilities, but Black suggested that developers closely examine each use case before implementing a SmartGlass feature. For example, using the accelerometer in a smartphone to emulate a baseball sounds cool, but the possibility that users may accidentally throw their expensive phones into even more expensive HDTVs might be something a game developer would want to avoid.