Personally I think it’s a bunch of hot air. PlayStation has made mouse and keyboard support available to game developers for a long time, and hardly any of them has released any games that use it.
Here’s what I posted in the Eurogamer comments.
I’m glad native M&K support is coming to consoles, but I think it’s futile to try and seperate M&K players from controller players. XIM4 already proves how futile this is. Plus it splits the player base into smaller groups like paid DLC maps do, which is always a bad outcome.
Seems like Microsoft is attempting to introduce some sort of ‘honor system’ in order to protect controller players from M&K players. Requesting that the XIM4 players voluntarily stop using their devices and only play on M&K servers. I already know how that’s going to turn out. Empty M&K servers with a bunch of XIM4 players choosing to join the highly populated controller only servers instead.
That’s already happening right now. The Xim4 players are gonna continue to use the device for the advantage. No way will they switch to m&k servers and lose their advantage.
As much as I hate this, there’s nothing that can be done to stop it. It’s like the idea behind a “console shooter” is dying, with every platform wanting the same game. Hell, I’m willing to bet consoles will soon start being shipped with kb&m in the box instead of a controller. But for now, God knows I won’t be blowing $130 on a XIM4, or whatever proprietary adapter will be standard in the future. That’s money that could be put towards a good gaming PC in a few years.