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Roccat Power-Grid puts controls for your PC games on your iPhone

Given this week's news, the death of PC gaming appears to be greatly exaggerated. First, we hear that Valve is working on a Steam Box console to put PC games on your HDTV, and now gaming peripherals maker Roccat has introduced Power-Grid, software that allows you to control your computer games via your smartphone.
Written by Sean Portnoy, Contributor

Given this week's news, the death of PC gaming appears to be greatly exaggerated. First, we hear that Valve is working on a Steam Box console to put PC games on your HDTV, and now gaming peripherals maker Roccat has introduced Power-Grid, software that allows you to control your computer games via your smartphone.

You will be able to download Power-Grid for free -- though Roccat vaguely says "free to get started" -- for your iPhone or iPod Touch (or Android or Windows phone shortly thereafter) and pair it with the Power-Grid Launcher for you PC. You then get three "grid" screens with predefined controls, along with a fourth screen that can be completely customized by the user. One grid is called "Incoming Center," which lets you send and receive communications via Twitter, Skype, Facebook, TeamSpeak, and more, while a second one is a "Stats Control" screen that displays items like CPU usage, free hard drive space, and network traffic. The "Sound Control" grid allows you to tweak all game audio settings from your mobile device.

Using the Power-Grid Launcher editor you can create your custom macros and other controls that you turn into icons that go onto the app's custom grid. Roccat says you will be able to share your customized controls with other gamers.

By year's end, Roccat promises some additional hardware that will work with Power-Grid-enabled phones. This Smart Gear will include the Project Phobo gaming keyboard, which has a built-in phone charger and will interact with your phone, letting you text from your full keyboard and take calls using your headset.

You can currently apply to be an iPhone beta tester for the Power-Grid program here. Are you going to take the new tool for a spin? Let us know in the Comments section below.

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