Although Xbox One still does not have official keyboard and mouse support, but workarounds are available. According to Gamespot, Microsoft indicated that it has no plans to shut them down. Xbox Vice President Mike Ybarra took to Twitter over the weekend to address concerns about how a third-party party mouse and keyboard adapter could give players an unfair advantage in competitive games, like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and explain why they are not addressing it on the system level.
Developers have the choice to use APIs that detect and not allow these. It’s up to them, but the capability is there. https://t.co/jE97R6oj0c
— Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) February 18, 2018
https://twitter.com/XboxQwik/status/965336663718178816
Ever since first-person shooters first made the jump from PC to consoles in the 1990s, it’s been conventional wisdom that mouse and keyboard offer a distinct competitive edge over gamepads because of the greater speed and accuracy with which one can move their arm and wrist than their thumb. Ever since crossplay between consoles and PCs has become viable, this divide has been a point of contention for how it could work. Gears of War 4, for instance, added social crossplay to its multiplayer mode, but not for ranked competitive play. Overwatch, meanwhile, has kept its console and PC players siloed, and lead designer Jeff Kaplan has voiced concerns about the unresolved state of console mouse and keyboard adapters creating competitive disparity.
Microsoft promised in 2017 that official mouse and keyboard support would be heading to Xbox One as part of the general initiative to merge the Windows and Xbox gaming platforms. Although that support has yet to materialize, Ybarra’s comments have clarified the company’s intent with leaving it to developers to determine what’s best for their games. For single-player games the competitive edge of mouse and keyboard doesn’t matter, and leaving it enabled is a great accessibility option for players that might have difficulty manipulating a gamepad. Instead, Ybarra suggests that developers implement their own measures as works for them, such as Gears of War 4 giving Xbox One players a menu option to opt in our out of crossplay with their PC counterparts.
While some might see this as avoiding making a decision until official support is implemented, the underlying philosophy seems pretty clear, following the general direction of the Xbox platform toward inclusion and universality.
Updated on 2.19.18: Headline altered for clarity.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.