The way you use your Xbox One is about to change for the better – again. Microsoft announced this week that keyboard and mouse support is coming to the system and it’s not just real, it’s coming soon.
“We’re enabling mouse and keyboard support for select Xbox Insiders in the coming weeks,” Microsoft said in the announcement.
While most wired or wireless USB keyboards and mice will work on Xbox One, Microsoft also announced that it’s partnering with Razer to bring some official functionality to the table that will include something else previously relegated to PCs. Yes, you guessed it: RGB lighting.
Now, once this hits the big time, you won’t be able to just play any old game with mouse and keyboard. Developers will be able to enable it for their game, so it’ll be on a game-by-game basis. Don’t expect to be plugging laser-precise rounds into people in Halo anytime soon.
“Developers can now build mouse and keyboard support in their games if and how they choose. It’s important to note that mouse and keyboard support for games is added on a title-by-title basis, entirely at developers’ discretion. For all other titles, nothing changes. Mouse and keyboard input is not enabled by default for games. Each development team knows their titles best and we support them in creating the right experience for their games as they see fit, to ensure an optimal and fair gaming experience,” the announcement says.
Warframe will be one of the first games to enable it, but Microsoft says it’ll be announcing more games on its November 10 Inside Xbox broadcast.
This is really cool. Combined with Microsoft’s accessibility controller, Xbox One will have more officially-supported ways to play games than just about anyone else. If you want to control games a certain way, there’ll be an option for you. This is also sure to open up cross-platform gameplay that much more, too. I can see a future where plugging in a mouse and keyboard moves you over to a PC-gaming lobby where you’ll be able to play with people using the same armaments without having to change any settings.
As this is only heading to Xbox Insiders a couple weeks from now, I wouldn’t expect to be playing games this way for a couple months yet, but it’s possible we could see it reach general access before the end of the year. From there, it’s up to developers to decide how widespread adoption is.
