After teasing the feature earlier this year, Microsoft is finally ready to add keyboard and mouse support to Xbox Cloud Gaming. Additionally, the company confirmed some big latency improvements are on the way to improve gameplay experiences.
In a session at XFest 2022, Microsoft revealed that keyboard/mouse support is on the way, according to The Verge via Tom Warren. And while Xbox consoles have enjoyed the feature for some time now, Microsoft has worked tirelessly to update and improve its cloud gaming offering.
Currently, supported games on Xbox Cloud Gaming require a controller if you’re playing on a PC, and mobile players can use touch controls or a controller.
Microsoft is adding keyboard and mouse support to Xbox Cloud Gaming soon. Xbox devs are being encouraged to add support to games now so they light up in xCloud once the integration is ready https://t.co/nBlgat5voJ pic.twitter.com/aYc5HftCia
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) June 21, 2022
Microsoft is now encouraging game developers to make the necessary changes to support keyboard/mouse input and take advantage of some improvements to the latency. However, it’s important to remember that this is coming “soon,” so it’s not available yet.
However, it doesn’t look like developers will have to make too many changes to take advantage of this much-requested feature.
For those unaware, Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) is Microsoft’s service that streams Xbox games to TVs, PCs, mobile devices, and more and competes with Google’s Stadia, which launched with keyboard and mouse support out of the gate.
Once support finally goes live, users can stream Xbox games to a PC and use their favorite PC gaming keyboard and mouse instead of switching over to a controller. And finally, Microsoft has been working on a new Display Details API that should drastically improve latency, eventually paving the way for higher resolution gameplay on Xbox Cloud Gaming.
via The Verge
