Thursday, June 23rd 2022
Xbox Cloud Gaming Set to Receive Keyboard Support & latency Improvements
Microsoft has discussed upcoming additions to Xbox Cloud Gaming including mouse and keyboard support along with latency improvements during a recent developer event. The current list of Xbox titles supporting keyboard and mouse input is currently quite short but as Microsoft promotes this new feature we would expect this lineup to grow. Microsoft also announced a new Direct Capture feature in their Display Details API that can reduce latency by up to 72 ms to as low as 2 -12 ms compared to 8 - 74 ms with the current pipeline.
This new API does come with some limitations however such as only allowing a maximum resolution of 1440p and not supporting dynamic resolution or HDR yet. These limitations should have a minimal effect on developers as streams are currently limited to 720p on mobile and 1080p on other platforms. Microsoft also plans to launch several new tools soon to assist developers in adding Direct Capture support to their games.
Source:
Microsoft (via The Verge)
This new API does come with some limitations however such as only allowing a maximum resolution of 1440p and not supporting dynamic resolution or HDR yet. These limitations should have a minimal effect on developers as streams are currently limited to 720p on mobile and 1080p on other platforms. Microsoft also plans to launch several new tools soon to assist developers in adding Direct Capture support to their games.
Morgan Brown - Software Engineer @ XboxXbox has been supporting keyboard and mouse for a few years now, and we're working on adding it to streaming for PC usersVideo
3 Comments on Xbox Cloud Gaming Set to Receive Keyboard Support & latency Improvements
In the end it's much cheaper than buying many Gaming PC and/or consoles. Most kids have anyway some kind of computer to do their homework. you can now buy something cheap and they can game on it.
I tested it to play with friend using it, it's very usable. i still prefer way more playing on my high end pc, but for people that are on limited budget, cloud gaming is a real alternative.
The best option remain Geforce Now, but it's the least user friendly. Stadia is top on gaming experience but the hardware age is starting to show and the game selection suck (even if they announced supporting proton to make porting game easier.)
I didn't play much with Xbox because you had to had a remote. tried it a bit and it was ok. The user experience is better than Geforce Now but it's last in quality.
If Microsoft is able to improve significantly the quality of the stream and reduce the latency, they will probably have a winner there. Their game selection is top notch.
Maybe it'll become something in the future. The biggest selling point would be imo making cheating impossible when the game runs on their servers.
As much as i'm a diehard, my kid will end up using this tech sooner or later