 I enjoy gaming both on PC and console. It really just depends on the genre. Mostly PC because I have a variety of different choices of input options. Because it's easier because I have a PC and I don't have a console. PC, higher frame rates, cheaper games. I prefer PC gaming because I don't know. Most games there's headshot mechanics and to aim for the head on a controller is a lot harder. Last time I tried to play a game using a controller I was like, what is this for an object? For me I find joysticks, like trying to aim with a joystick is completely ridiculous. Like you're there and you're using both sticks and you're kind of trying to aim at someone but... With a mouse it's just so much more natural to compensate for your own natural movements as well as what they're doing. And it's just way worse than a mouse where you're just like, boom, click on the head. Except Rocket League. Like I still use a controller on the PC like some of the time, like if I'm playing Rocket League or something. I really enjoy playing with a controller for certain games. So the fact that you're playing on PC you can kind of do both. What if I told you that you can now play Xbox shooters, Xbox games with keyboard and mouse? Yeah, I heard about that. What? I already know that you can play Xbox keyboard and mouse I guess. I thought you could already do that. Does it make you want to play console more? No. That's pretty crazy. Does it work well though? Let's go play today and make it the perfect gift for the cord cutter on your list this holiday season. When Microsoft first made the announcement that the Xbox One would be getting mouse and keyboard support, they made it very clear that they would not be pulling a magic lever and poof, you can throw away your Xbox controllers and play any Xbox One game ever made with your favorite PC peripherals. Instead, in classic Microsoft style, they've left it up to developers, developers, developers, developers, to put mouse and keyboard support into their games if and how they choose. So for that reason, the corpus of supporting titles started off pretty small, actually really small. Like I could have listed them all in the time that I've spent talking about how few of them there are. With that said, things are already improving. A half dozen more releasing this month and there's another seven in the coming soon category, which okay, actually still is not that many. But there's a good reason why developers might want to take this slow or skip keyboard and mouse support outright. I mean, I doubt there's anyone out there who thinks that it's fair for players who are using the official controller that came with their console to suddenly be at a huge disadvantage against others who are aiming with a mouse. And that's a good point. But there are actually some solutions in the works, and some of them at least are better than just improved aimbot for the controller players. So Microsoft says that it's been educating developers on keeping games fun, fair, and correctly balanced, and has given them the ability to separate players by what inputs they're using, along with a new API for querying mouse capabilities and pointer data. So then, with that in mind, we sat down with Shooter's Fortnite and Warframe. Both of them are free to play, by the way, if you want to try this out for yourself. And top-down defense game, X-Morph Defense. Fortnite actually comes out of the gate pretty strong with no pressing A on your controller to continue, actually required before the game recognizes your peripherals. It's better than even some PC ports. And it actually mostly works pretty well. In X-Morph, you've got to use your controller initially, then switch to navigating with your keyboard or with the mouse, kind of like the Xbox menu itself. And then Warframe sits somewhere in the middle, so it does have a cursor that you can move with your mouse, maybe because it has a PC port. But again, there are screens in the game that only work with a controller, like when you first launch the game or when you need to install an update. One thing that all of the games had in common, though, is that once you're in the game, the experience is pretty sweet. Relatively speaking, like compared to using a controller, it's just no contest. It's funny, but for both the longtime PC and console gamers around here, it was surprising in a true apples-to-apples comparison, where you can nearly instantly switch between control schemes how much more accurate and intuitive a mouse feels to aim. Plus, you get a bit more control settings-wise. So mouse sensitivity is set globally in the Xbox Connect and Devices settings, but of course, you also have whatever DPI buttons and onboard mouse profiles that your particular device allows. So this can be useful if you're the type who likes to change the sensitivity during a game, like if you're sniping or something, and the Xbox supports up to five mouse buttons. Interestingly, using a keyboard and mouse can also actually change the game mechanics a bit, depending on how the developers implement it. So in X-Morph Defense, with a controller, you move your ship with the left stick and use the right stick to aim and shoot, kind of like Geometry Wars. Now, there's a modern classic, but when you're playing with a mouse, a crosshair appears on screen and you only shoot when you click, which in my opinion makes piloting the ship more smooth and gives you more trigger control, since discrete mouse clicks are a lot easier to execute than joystick pushes. Pretty cool so far, but it's not quite plug and play. While Microsoft says that most wired or wireless USB keyboards and mice will work on Xbox One, your experience could vary significantly depending on the hardware that you choose. So for one thing, unlike the PlayStation 4, the Xbox One does not support standard Bluetooth, so you can only use wireless peripherals that have their own receiver dongles plugged into one of the three available USB ports, two of which, by the way, are on the back. So that's another thing. Make sure that if you're using wired peripherals, you factor in the foot or so of length that you're going to lose during the reach around. That might cause you to sit closer to the TV than you'd typically prefer. Now there are also three different tiers of hardware, designed for Xbox, previously available peripherals from Microsoft licensed hardware partners, and everything else. Now we weren't actually able to test any designed for Xbox devices, since the first ones are actually going to be unveiled by Razer at CES in January 2019. With that said though, frankly, none of the key features seem to revolutionary anyway, so they'll support Xbox dynamic lighting, which is apparently based on Razer Chroma, and they will have a dedicated Xbox button, but the Windows key on any regular keyboard already mostly fulfills that role, other than that holding it down does not, at this time, trigger the shutdown and restart options like it does on the controller. Hopefully that's just a simple patch and we can expect it soon. Let's take a look at the hardware we did try then. We played with four different mice, the Dark Core RGB and Glaive RGB from Corsair, the Classic or Go 2 from FinalMouse, and finally the non-gaming oriented MX Master 2S from Logitech. And surprisingly here, the only mice that we had issues with at first anyway, were the two from Corsair, Microsoft's newest Xbox licensed hardware partner, who released a short list of products that have been tested to support Xbox One, including these ones. Well, apparently what went down here is that the partnership and the press released were moving a little faster than the actual testing of the equipment, which only began on November 14th. The upshot though, is that while out of the box our Corsair mice were unusable in Fortnite, and not great in Warframe or XMorph either, they can be improved, because here's what happened. It turns out that these mice were just configured to elite out of the box. Okay, so the Xbox uses the standard HID protocol, only officially supporting polling rates of 8 milliseconds or 125 hertz, which was fine for Corsair's keyboard and our Logitech and FinalMouse mice, since their polling rates of 2 milliseconds or 500 hertz were close enough. But out of the box, our Corsair mice have polling rates of 1 millisecond or 1000 hertz, which is simply too much data for the Xbox to handle with its current drivers. So, while they wait for Microsoft to issue a fix, Corsair has updated its press materials and published a blog post advising users to first fire up their IQ software on a PC, and turn the polling rate down, then hit the couch with your favorite lap board, a solution that by the way we can confirm works perfectly. So on that note, is keyboard and mouse support perfect on the Xbox at this time? No. Outside of games, browsing the web or the Microsoft Store with an actual keyboard is sick, but you've been able to do that for a long time, and this new announcement does not allow you to use your mouse on the Xbox dashboard or even in the Edge browser app. That kind of blows. As for in-game, there it gets even more complicated. Like there are certain games like fighting games, driving, sports games, where I don't even care. I, and probably nearly all of you, would prefer a controller anyway. But for shooters and RTS? Hell yeah. This is absolutely the way forward. I mean, even here there are some small wrinkles to iron out, like the fact that vibration feedback is still enabled on your controller while you're gaming on your keyboard and mouse, and you probably still won't be quite on par with the PC gamers with high refresh rate monitors that Fortnite in particular is apparently going to match you up with, but it is still way more fun than using a joystick, and possibly the only way to play certain games in the future. You heard me. Crazily enough, Microsoft has not outright rejected the idea of Xbox games that require a keyboard and mouse. What a strange combination of words to have just come out of my mouth. Almost as strange as this. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah! 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