Earlier this year, it was revealed that mouse and keyboard support was coming to Xbox One. Fast-forward to today, and there's a new milestone on that development.

If you're a member of the Alpha or Beta program via Xbox Insider, you can now use a mouse, though it's in a pretty limited capacity.

How limited? Well, for now, all you can do is play Warframe with it. It's not a perfect or ideal glimpse into mouse/keyboard support if you aren't a Warframe player, but it will be interesting to get a feel for it, even if just for a little bit.

As you may know, the feature doesn't require specific hardware, but it also won't ever feature universal support. Rather, compatibility will be on a game-by-game, or in other words, up to the developer to implement, not Microsoft.

The chances that genres like first-person shooters will support the feature is unlikely, after all, developers wouldn't want to give an unfair advantage to mouse and keyboard players over controller players. But in genres where it doesn't make a difference, or any non-competitive game, there's a chance you might be able to play with a mouse and keyboard.

Mouse and keyboard support will be particularly useful for strategy games and some tactical RPGs and some simulation games. As you may know, there are quite a few games that just don't work as well on a controller than a mouse and keyboard, such as Cities: Skylines.

What will be interesting to see is whether or not this leads to more strategy games coming to Xbox One. The strategy genre, by and large, is exclusive to PC, and when popular games in the genre make the jump to consoles the end product normally isn't as good. So this could entice some developers to develop their strategy games for Xbox One as well.

When mouse and keyboard support will roll out to everyone still isn't clear, as Microsoft hasn't provided any release date or window for the feature.

Posted: Oct 29, 2018 9:38 am
Related Forum: Xbox Forum

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/2018/10/28/xbox-one-mouse-support-insider/