Keyboard and mouse support should be headed to Xbox Cloud Gaming relatively soon, according to recent comments by Morgan Brown, a software engineer on the Xbox game streaming team, who took part in a new video shared on the Microsoft Game Dev channel on YouTube this week and encouraged developers to get ready for the addition of KB/M to the xCloud service. The feature was initially teased by Microsoft Flight Simulator boss Jorg Neumann earlier this year, who spoke during a Q&A video for the acclaimed flight game in March and noted that mouse and keyboard control would be added at a platform-level, an implication that any Xbox cloud game could offer mouse and keyboard control. Brown additionally disclosed several new ways in which developers could improve streaming latency in their cloud games, including a new Display Details API that can save up to 72 ms of latency.
“Xbox has been supporting keyboard and mouse for a few years now, and we’re working on adding it to streaming for PC users,” Brown confirmed in a video about how developers could reduce latency and better optimize for mobile experiences. “But you can start adding it to your game right now and your console keyboard and mouse users will appreciate it. It will light up in streaming once we’ve finished adding it.”
It will allow Xbox Cloud Gaming users to stream Xbox games, not PC ones, using a mouse and keyboard. We could see games like Sea of Thieves, Minecraft, Halo Infinite, and even Fortnite all support mouse and keyboard through Xbox Cloud Gaming. The list of Xbox games that support mouse and keyboard is still relatively small, though. It will be particularly useful when Microsoft expands the Xbox Cloud Gaming library later this year.
Source: The Verge