Thinking About Keyboard/Mouse Support on Xbox One (Premium)

For over a year now, we've been told that official keyboard and mouse support would one day come to Xbox One. That support is almost certainly coming. But it probably won't take the form that hardcore gamers would like. And it most certainly won't usher in a new age of PC vs. console multiplayer gaming. Unless something changes, that is.

The issue, for the non-gamers in the audience, is that gaming on a PC with a keyboard and mouse is far more accurate and offers better performance than gaming (on a PC or a console) with a controller. So a match in which one player is using a keyboard and mouse and another is using a controller would be decidedly one-sided. In favor of the keyboard/mouser.

This is one reason why PC/console interoperability is almost non-existent when it comes to games. The PC gamers would simply dominate the console gamers.

(No, it's not the only reason. We also don't see PlayStation 4 gamers playing against Xbox One gamers in the same games either. That has more to do with the insular, protectionist policies of the console makers, in particular Sony, than anything else. I'm sure that Activision would love for PS4 and Xbox One gamers to compete together in Call of Duty, for example.)

So there are two ways, from a technical level, for this interoperability to work. You could bring console controllers to the PC. And/or you could bring keyboard and mouse to the consoles.

As it turns out, both have already happened. The PlayStation 4's Dual Shock 4 controller is PC compatible, as are all versions of the Xbox One controller. And the PlayStation 4 does support USB keyboards and mice, albeit not for games: This support is for entering text, browsing the web, using apps, navigating the UI, and so on.

On the Xbox One, keyboard and mouse are not officially supported, though various Microsoft executives have said over the past year that this support is coming. Apparently, you can use certain adapters to enable this support today, unofficially. And Microsoft is OK with that because it lets those with certain accessibility issues play games that would otherwise be off-limits to them.

But this does, of course, open up the opportunity for abuse. Gamers looking for an edge could use their keyboard and mouse to dominate virtually everyone else, since almost all console gamers are, of course, using a controller.

I have experience with this, sort of: Back in the mid-1990's, when I switched from the Amiga to the PC, I gave up Atari/Sega-style controllers for the keyboard. And I played early PC first-person shooters, like Castle Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM (and its many offshoots), and Duke Nukem 3D, entirely with a keyboard. But by the time real 3D games like Quake appeared, using a mouse became necessary. With a mouse, you could take advantage of what was then called "free look" capabilities, where you could move in one direction (using the keyboard) and look in any direction (using the mouse) simultaneously. And not just si...