iBuyPower Magic Gives All Game Multitouch Capabilities

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With new controlling technologies like Playstation Move and Xbox 360 Kinect (formally know as Project Natal) gaining a considerable about of buzz and accumulating a pretty hefty following, it’s pretty obvious that motion controlling is a way of the future. While the Nintendo Wii pioneered the idea of motion controlling in a home game console form factor, Playstation Move and Kinect have proven themselves through countless tech demos to be far more precise and usable.

Well, the Wii has been around for a while but another game platform has been using a pretty innovative control scheme for some time now and that is Apple’s line of iDevices. These devices, originally intended for things like making phone calls and listening to music, have seen themselves because some of the most widely used portable gaming platforms in the world even creeping up on Nintendo’s ever so popular  Nintendo DS.

One thing that has made iPhones and iPod touches such popular gaming devices are their multitouch display. Thanks to no physical buttons, game developers are given a large amount of freedom when it comes to a control scheme as they can place the virtual buttons wherever they want on the screen addition to incorporating unique gestures like pinch and zoom.

A company by the name iBuyPower has just come forth with some new software to give every computer game out there multitouch capabilities. iBuyPower’s Multitouch Advanced Gaming Interaface and Control or Magic, for short, is a bit of software designed to be used with their own in-house manufacturered laptops.

Basically how Magic works is it maps a multitouch gesture to a command recognized by the game. So for instance, tapping the screen will, obviously, be recognized by Magic as a clicking motion for things like selecting units or shooting a gun.

I’ve never been a fan of multitouch for FPS games but for a real time strategy like StarCraft or Command & Conquer I can see this turning out very useful.