It has been revealed that Xbox Cloud Gaming will be getting keyboard and mouse support, though Microsoft didn't give an exact date or even a vague release window for it.
The refurbished Xbox Series X consoles are still available at Microsoft Store.
The news was revealed during a talk delivered by Xbox software engineer Morgan Brown, reports GameSpot. In the talk, Brown talked about how the team is already working on adding the feature, while also saying that developers themselves should add it to their games when it comes out. He stated that the feature "will light up in streaming once we finish adding it."
Here is a snippet of Brown's talk:
Brown's announcement comes years after Xbox consoles got official mouse and keyboard support for users. However, it was made clear that this feature will not allow Xbox Cloud Gaming users to stream PC games on their machines. As reported by The Verge, this would now open up games to keyboard and mouse controls via the cloud, which includes fast-paced, competitive titles such as Fortnite and Halo Infinite.
It will also potentially increase the size of the still small roster of games on Xbox that support keyboard and mouse controls. As per a list shared by PureXbox, the updated list as of June 2022 includes a total of 102 games. But not all of these games even have actual full support for keyboard and mouse, with a disclaimer saying that some games have "Limited" support while others can only work with a mouse.
By adding full support for mouse and keyboard on Xbox Cloud Gaming, Microsoft is also taking the lunch money of competing streaming service Google Stadia. That's because full keyboard and mouse support is one of the only good things Stadia has left in its arsenal, writes 9To5Google.
It remains to be seen whether this will be the death of Google Stadia and other game streaming services, but it certainly is a big upgrade for Xbox Cloud Gaming users. That's because they will no longer need to scrounge for hardware beyond anything what their computers offered if they want to stream games.
Read also: You Can Play Xbox Games Without A Console On Your Samsung TV Soon
More Improvements To Xbox Cloud Gaming
Cloud gaming in itself is awesome, but it does have a major weakness: latency. No matter how fast your internet connection is, it will always have a slight delay. That's something that you can never, ever have when playing games. Considering how Xbox Cloud Gaming has competitive titles like Battlefield V, latency is an absolute no-no.
It is this problem then that Brown's team at Microsoft is also working on. The Verge reports that the company is also working on giving developers more options to decrease streaming latency in games. This includes a new Display Details API, which could allow devs to have a 72ms reduction in overall latency via the use of Direct Capture.
With Direct Capture, games no longer have to contend with problems like waiting on VSync and double/triple buffering, as well as TV scaling. All of these contribute to latency, but Direct Capture eliminates the need for them and is able to drop latency to as low as 2-12ms - an excellent number compared to traditional display methods.