Xbox One Will Be Getting Keyboard and Mouse Support Soon

Microsoft has announced it’s planning to adopt mouse and keyboard support for the Xbox One. During a panel session at PAX West, Xbox director, Mike Ybarra, stated that the first game to support keyboard and mouse controls for the console will be announced soon.

The main issue is that keyboard and mouse controls are more precise than playing with a controller, and that makes online play complicated, or worst for players that uses controllers. However, Microsoft has some thoughts about how to make that work.

“Keyboard and mouse support is definitely coming, we have to be very smart about how we do that,” said Mike Ybarra. “We’ll leave it a lot to the developer choice.”

“A lot of people tweet me and say ‘you can’t do this because of fairness’ and we understand that,” Ybarra said. “We run two platforms: the Windows platform and the Xbox platform, and so when we bring keyboard and mouse we’ll coach developers and say you have to think about your multiplayer pools. If you have a competitive game, people will probably want the choice to say I’ll play with other keyboard and mouse people, I’ll play with only controller people or I’ll play with any of those.”

The most viable solution for now is that new games will need to include extra settings to its multiplayer and giving the player the choice of only playing against others using the same control, like Grand Theft Auto.

In Grand Theft Auto Online, players gets to choose their targeting preferences before joining a lobby. That way no one player gets an advantage simply by using one input method over the other.