Microsoft has finally seen fit to add mouse and keyboard support as an option for games on the Xbox One series of consoles. The company also announced a partnership with peripherals manufacturer Razer in creating branded accessories for the console family.
This announcement is something a subset of Xbox One owners have been wanting for a while now. And sure, some gamers may find it weird to switch to playing their Xbox games at their desks with a mouse and keyboard, but those of us playing cross-platform titles would welcome the change. And since the lack of mouse and keyboard support has often been an excuse for PC owners not to play consoles, these kinds of announcements may bring a few new players to the fold.
The gulf in accuracy, input and communication ability between controller users and those with a mouse and keyboard is well known, and it’s nice to see a narrowing of that gap. There are relatively few cross-platform games on the console at the moment, but with an expanding library, we can expect that this announcement will make more people fell comfortable playing on Xbox rather than a PC over time.
Fortnite is probably the most obvious choice for a cross-platform title right now, but many more games are either working on adding the function, or plan to enable it in the future. Warframe, Bomber Crew, Deep Rock Galactic, Strange Brigade, Vermintide 2, War Thunder and X-Morph Defense will all be adding support in November, while Children of Morta, DayZ, Minion Master, Moonlighter, Vigor, Warface and Wargroove will be coming later in 2019.
CES is coming up soon, in January 2019 in fact, and we can expect to see more news then. One thing many gamers are expecting is to see what peripherals the partnership between Razer and Microsoft churns out. As is always the case with Microsoft consoles though, we can expect to pay top dollar for the branded mouse and keyboard bundle for Xbox One. I for one am just hoping that it’s at least a decent mechanical keyboard. We do know that these branded models will support dynamic lighting modes, allowing game developers to change the backlight for the sake of immersion. The Xbox-branded keyboards will also have dedicated Xbox Home buttons. Although I’d imagine enterprising gamers will come up with a way to map a macro key to accomplish the same function some time in the future.
The console update for this feature will launch next week, according the Microsoft. Learn more about Microsoft’s plans for the Xbox One over at their official site.
