Last November’s announcement of support for keyboard and mouse controls in 15 Xbox One titles was the culmination of literally years of Microsoft promises on the matter. Now, peripheral maker Razer seems to have accidentally revealed the feature is expanding to a handful of additional titles, including some big-name franchises.
As part of a CES stealth launch of the $250 Razer Turret—the first officially licensed wireless keyboard/mouse combo for the Xbox One—Razer provided press materials that listed 22 compatible Xbox One games. That includes the 15 games Microsoft already announced in November, plus:
- Gears of War 5
- Gears Tactics*
- PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds*
- Roblox
- Sea of Thieves*
- The Sims 4*
- Surviving Mars*
About 25 hours later, Razer issued a “corrected” press release that condensed that list considerably. While Gears of War 5 and Roblox are still confirmed for Xbox One keyboard/mouse support, the other (asterisked) games listed above were no longer included in the corrected release.
What led to the correction? A Razer representative told Ars, “we have many ongoing discussions with game developers who are working on keyboard/mouse and lighting support, and a few titles in the original alert were erroneously communicated and/or were done so in advance of the game developer’s preferred timing (emphasis added).”
That suggests at least some of the five newly “unlisted” titles are indeed getting keyboard/mouse support, even if we’re not supposed to know it yet. But which ones were accidentally leaked and which ones were just “erroneously communicated”?
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds developer PUBG Corp. has already clarified on Reddit that “the information in [Razer’s] advertisement is false and our game was incorrectly listed.” We’ve reached out to the other publishers affected by the correction but have yet to receive any responses as of press time.
Gears Tactics is perhaps the most surprising game on Razer’s initial list, since that game was announced as a PC exclusive at least year’s E3. It seems unlikely that Razer would just assume an Xbox One version of the game existed in compiling its initial list of supported games.
Of the remainder, The Sims 4 and Surviving Mars seem like no-brainer examples of games that could easily add keyboard/mouse support on Xbox One, as they were already designed to take full advantage of those controls on PC. Sea of Thieves‘ inclusion, meanwhile, could potentially allow console players to enjoy the text-based in-game chat that PC players already enjoy in addition to non-verbal emotes.
Of the newly confirmed keyboard/mouse additions, Gears of War 5 isn’t that surprising. Microsoft and developer The Coalition have long allowed PC and console players to mix in competitive Gears of War 4 matches.
Microsoft has said it will leave the addition of keyboard/mouse support in Xbox One games up to individual developers and has made API tools available to ease the integration. For multiplayer titles, developers have the option to segregate Xbox One players into different matchmaking pools based on their chosen control scheme.
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1438635