Xbox One Mouse And Keyboard Support Is Only Months Away According To Phil Spencer

There are plenty of competent first-person shooter (FPS) games on the Xbox One gaming console, but they all rely on Microsoft’s wireless controller. Any PC gamer worth his (or her) salt will tell you that the only way to truly become dominant in FPS titles is to use a mouse and keyboard. Microsoft has heard those cries, and mouse/keyboard support will be arriving on the Xbox One in the coming months.

After last referencing mouse/keyboard support back in July 2015 in a tweet, Xbox chief Phil Spencer is once again talking up the feature. Given Microsoft’s Xbox Play Anywhere initiative, which is blurring the line between Xbox One and Windows 10 gaming, support for traditional PC peripherals was a given.

“When we enable PC and mouse on console it’ll be interesting to see how many of those creators think about running their PC and mouse-only game on console,” said Spencer in an interview with PCGamesN. “And then this idea of Play Anywhere might get even more interesting for those guys.”

Spencer followed up with the real kicker that should delight Xbox One fans, “Truthfully in our dev kit modes now keyboard works, mouse support is a little bit further away. I say it because I know it’s not years away, it’s more like months away, but we don’t have an exact date yet.”

Months away… perhaps in time for the Xbox One S launch in August? That could be possible, and support will most definitely arrive ahead of Project Scorpio, which is scheduled to make an appearance in late 2017.

Enabling mouse and keyboard interactions on the Xbox One — coupled with its Windows 10 codebase and the potential for Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps on the Xbox One — could help further expand the console’s viability beyond a gaming/entertainment device.