Xbox cloud gaming is getting mouse and keyboard support soon

A new presentation just showcased some Xbox cloud gaming enhancements

Xbox cloud gaming mouse and keyboard support, continually teased for roughly a year now, is finally coming to the platform. Announced by way of the Microsoft Game Dev YouTube channel in a stream meant to assist developers creating projects on the Xbox platform, the long-awaited feature is going to be rolled out widely this year.

Xbox engineer Morgan Brown started the segment (which begins at 16:45 in the below video) on how they’ve been looking at adding the feature “for a while now,” and are finally implementing it. As Brown puts it, developers can add the feature “right now,” as a way to plus up the game for folks who aren’t using cloud gaming on PC already.

Brown also touched on a few other topics that will make Xbox cloud gaming that much smoother in the future:

• Tricks to achieve lower latency for cloud gaming, which results in snappier controls
• The introduction of direct capture for cloud gaming
• Tips to create a better UI for mobile devices that avoid the “tiny text problem”
• Full screen rendering system changes that allow for more custom resolutions, so cloud gaming looks better overall (with less black bars, and even resizing on the fly)
• Easier access to adding subtitles for accessibility, as well as brightness, audio, and controller remapping options (with options to save individual device settings, so you don’t need to constantly remap or readjust)

All good stuff! So far Microsoft has been one of the better purveyors of cloud gaming, so hopefully the above bullet point enhancements continue to flow like wine.