Microsoft announced it is preparing to add mouse and keyboard support to Xbox Cloud Gaming, the streaming service that delivers Xbox games to TVs, PCs and mobile devices.
The company confirmed developers should start readying their games for mouse and keyboard input as Microsoft finalizes the streaming-side implementation. The move aims to let players use the same input methods in streamed Xbox titles that they already use on consoles and PCs.
How Microsoft describes the rollout
Morgan Brown, a software engineer on the Xbox Cloud Gaming team, said Xbox has supported keyboard and mouse for several years and the team is working to extend that capability to streaming for PC users. Brown advised developers to add keyboard-and-mouse support to their games now, noting that “it will show up in streaming as soon as we finish adding it.”
The feature had been previously hinted at by Jorg Neumann, head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, who suggested that mouse and keyboard support could arrive between June and September of this year.
Which games could be affected
Once active, Xbox Cloud Gaming users will be able to stream Xbox games — not only PC-native titles — using a mouse and keyboard. That could open the door for games such as Sea of Thieves, Minecraft, Halo Infinite and Fortnite to be played via mouse and keyboard through the cloud service.
Microsoft noted, however, that the current roster of Xbox games with mouse-and-keyboard support remains small, so availability will depend on developers implementing the input options for their titles.
New API to reduce streaming latency
In addition to input support, Microsoft said it is providing developers new tools to improve streaming latency. The company is building a new API intended to reduce latency to as low as 72ms by using direct capture, which moves certain hardware capture tasks into software to avoid waiting for VSync and to reduce buffering.
Direct capture, Microsoft stated, carries a limitation: it supports a maximum resolution of 1440p. The company indicated this is not a major constraint for Xbox Cloud Gaming given that the service already scales streams to 720p on mobile devices and 1080p for PC and web.
Availability and timing
Despite these announced improvements for input and latency, Microsoft described the arrival of both features as “coming soon” and did not provide specific release dates.
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