Xbox One gamers will be able to start playing their favorite games using arguably the best input mechanism combination for shooters and strategy titles, the mouse and keyboard, starting Wednesday, November 14. This will be a watershed moment in console games, especially on Xbox, which has seen keyboard gamers use workarounds and interconnect hardware to achieve the same result for years. Moving forward, playing with a keyboard and mouse will be officially allowed.
It will also be officially controlled.
Keyboard and mouse play is standard operating procedure for gamers on PC and it's proved by far the best combination of input options for genres like shooters, strategy titles, and anything that requires a high-level of pointer accuracy and simultaneous access to a lot of different hot keys. It's not so good for racers, beat'em ups, or sports titles, where the nuance of analog sticks and triggers can be more impactful.
That's meant, though, that those who were able to get a keyboard and mouse working on consoles like the Xbox One, could often achieve a major advantage in certain games. That's been most apparent in the last year in Fortnite. Microsoft's response has been a combination strategy of enabling keyboard and mouse usage, quarantining those using workarounds (or banning them entirely if game developers wish it) and then making sure that anyone playing on keyboard and mice are forced to play together, so no one has an unfair advantage.
The first games to support keyboard and mouse usage will be Fortnite and Warframe, starting Wednesday, November 14, with other titles, like Strange Brigade, Bomber Crew, Vermintide 2, War Thunder, and DayZ, following sometime later, as per Hexus.
This has lead to companies like Razer announcing their own Xbox One keyboards, like the Razer x Xbox: