Microsoft has no plans to block keyboard and mouse support on Xbox One

Though Microsoft hasn’t announced any official support for keyboard and mouse on Xbox One just yet, there are still ways to make it happen.

Though players have raised concern over the fact that keyboard and mouse users could have some advantage over those using console controllers – particularly in the case of multiplayer shooters – Microsoft has now explained why it has no intentions of stopping them.

According the Xbox engineering lead, Mike Ybarra, Microsoft actually could block keyboard and mouse setups on Xbox consoles but said there are a couple of good reasons for not doing so. 

Fair play

The first of these reasons is that Microsoft would rather not place limitations on developers and the games they’re creating. The second is that having the option of keyboard and mouse support can be helpful from an accessibility perspective.

Besides the empowerment for users and developers that keyboard and mouse support brings, it’s unlikely that Microsoft would want to block it given it’s already said that it has plans to introduce official support.

We’ve been hearing talk of official mouse and keyboard support from Microsoft for around three years now but it’s yet to materialize. As recently as September 2017, Ybarra said there are definitely still plans to make it happen but there still wasn’t any word on when.

Ybarra acknowledged the concerns that there may be advantages and disadvantages to players but said that Microsoft will 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 Windows platform and the Xbox platform.“

One solution which retains choice for players and game creators is that developers will create systems within their own games which will allow players to decide if they’d like to play against those with different setups from themselves. In Gears of War 4 for example, there’s cross-play support between Xbox and PC, but console players are able to choose whether or not they’d like to play with PC users. 

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February 19, 2018 at 07:53PM
Emma Boyle