Xbox One’s first mouse-and-keyboard games are coming soon

A lot of it, Ybarra rightly says, comes down to multiplayer. Microsoft tried to integrate controller and mouse players eons ago with the Shadowrun game on Xbox 360. It didn’t work. And it’ll never work. Instead, the company wants to help these developers figure out how to separate those out – to let people choose to play with mixed or separate player pools. In a cooperative or casual game like Minecraft, playing with a mouse-and-keyboard player isn’t going to be a big deal. The “Better Together” update coming to that game is going to unify Xbox, Switch, Android, iOS, and Windows 10 players, so they’re already courting a ton of different control schemes there. Integrating the support for mouse and keyboard on Xbox One in Minecraft is purely about support. Competitive games, though, would quickly become toxic without a way to separate those players out from each other.

This is a big tightrope for Microsoft to walk. The support could frustrate as many fans as it pleases, but as Engadget notes, developers could use the support as an excuse to skimp on proper controller interfaces. They certainly do that plenty already with console-to-PC ports.

Either way, this is good news for gamers. More options and more ways to play on more systems means it’s easier to get in and start having fun.

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2017/09/07/xbox-one-mouse-and-keyboard/