Xbox Will Support Mice and Keyboard!

The man in charge of Xbox says the company is working on supporting mice for playing games on the console. It will go with existing keyboard support, though it won’t immediately mean playing PC games on the console is possible.

Phil Spencer revealed the plans in response to a question on Twitter about streaming between a PC and an Xbox. He noted the company is “finishing” a project to allow gamers to stream games from an Xbox to a PC. He then said that he liked the idea of reversing the process but there are no plans to do so yet.

Another user then pointed out this would only work if the Xbox supported a mouse as well as a keyboard (which is presumably the case unless players were expected to work with a console stick, which would be a horrendous compromise.)

Spencer then replied that:

Yep, keyboard and mouse support for Xbox would need to be there for this to work, those aren’t far away.

before clarifying that “mouse is what we’d need to add.”

While Spencer was only talking in reference to streaming, it’s prompted speculation about other possible uses for a mouse on the console. This could include using it in place of a controller to operate menus, something that could be particularly useful as and when Windows 10 shows up on the console.

Another possibility is mouse support making it much more viable for developers to port PC games directly to the Xbox, avoiding the need for streaming.

There’s even been some talk of native Xbox games supporting keyboards and mice by design, though that seems extremely far-fetched given only a small minority of players would want or be able to use such an option.