We’ve always known Xbox was interested in bringing in keyboard and mouse support to their platforms but it was all just hushed rumours and speculations, however, during a panel at PAX West Xbox Platform CVP Mike Ybarra discussed mouse and keyboard support for Xbox One. This is what he had to say:
“Keyboard and mouse support is definitely coming. We have to be very smart in how we do that. We’ll leave it a lot up to developer choice. A lot of people tweet me and say “you can’t do this because of fairness,” and we understand that. We run two platforms; the Xbox platform, and the Windows platform.
And so, when we bring keyboard and mouse, we’ll coach developers and say look, you’ve got to think about your multiplayer pools, if you have a competitive game, people are probably going to want the choice to say I’ll play with other keyboard and mouse people or I’ll play only with controller people, or that I’ll play with any of those.
So you’ll see our first games supporting keyboard and mouse soon, I can’t announce what that is, but soon. And based on developer interest, they’ll choose to do keyboard and mouse, or not!”
Alongside this information, Jez Corden from Windows Central tested this out in the Minecraft Beta on the Xbox Insider Program with a Razer Hex mouse connected via USB.
This is on Xbox One. With a Razer mouse plugged in. First signs of mouse support showing up on Xbox Insider rings. pic.twitter.com/XhwHF3kRBn
— Jez Corden (@JezCorden) August 26, 2017
But it still seems to be in the initial stages with noticeable input lag being reported and no really proper support on games as of yet. How this progresses will be quite interesting to see but I for one am a supporter of this move to help give the user the option to choose between their input device.
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