Microsoft's SmartGlass technology, which turns any mobile device into a supporting second screen, is better for cross screen sharing than Wii U's GamePad, Yusuf Mehdi, chief marketing officer for Microsoft's game business, has told VentureBeat.

"In other cases, when you do want to have cross-screen sharing, that's where I believe this approach is actually better, because what we're doing is embracing it as truly a supporting screen," said Mehdi. "Not as the thing you should be looking at. Therefore, it needs to light up, it needs to notify you, it needs to actually provide content that's relevant in that example. So I feel pretty good about that. I certainly don't think there are any latency issues there. You can use any device for control, for tabbing, for browsing, for watching movies. It's got a richer platform for things."

Mehdi also questioned the ability for players of Wii U to continually switch focus between the TV and GamePad screens.

"I think… One of the things that's interesting is, when you're playing a quick, realtime, twitch game, how much can you look up and down between the screens? That's an interesting question," he said.

SmartGlass is scheduled to launch in the autumn, whilst Wii U is pencilled in for this holiday.