Keyboards, Mice, and Everything Nice

Gamers are a contentious people. It seems that as long as two standards exist, they’ll find ways to divide into camps and argue about it. The specific argument I want to focus on today is the age old rivalry between mouse and keyboard input versus controller input. I have no interest in weighing in on the pros and cons of each format as others with far more technical expertise have already done so, but I’ll get my biases out of the way and say that I will use a controller whenever possible. Instead, what I want to discuss is how these formats relate to their associated platforms.

(Technically “controller” could refer to any input device used for a game, but for convenience, I will be using the term to refer to what is sometimes called a gamepad.)

It would be easy to see controller versus keyboard as being just one facet of the much larger console versus PC debate, but in many ways, that simply isn’t true. For one, PCs have supported controller input for a long time. This is arguably a moot point because PCs can support basically anything if you have the drivers for it, but some games were developed with controllers in mind. This practice was not without controversy; the original PC release of Resident Evil 4 did not support mouse input, for example, leaving PC gamers to choose between playing with awkward keyboard-only controls or to stoop to the level of a console gamer and use a controller. It was far more common for games on PC to have no controller support at all. This could even be the case if there was a console version of the game. Including the controller configuration was deemed unnecessary. Perhaps this was an admission that the console control scheme wasn’t very good and was a necessary concession, or perhaps it reflects the perception that console and PC gamers are two different demographics with different sensibilities.

In the present day, controller support on PC is far more common due to a number of factors. For one, Microsoft made efforts to standardize the Xbox controller layout for PC games. Sony would later get in on PC gaming and now some games also provide the PlayStation glyphs for those using one of their controllers. Another major driver of controller support is the rise of handheld gaming PCs, particularly Valve’s Steam Deck. Including the control schemes used in the console versions just makes sense to ensure Steam Deck compatibility, and even games that are PC exclusive often have controller support now as a result. This was never such a farfetched idea to begin with, but its adoption now suggests the conventional wisdom of PC and console gamer sensibilities no longer holds true.

But what about the other way around? There’s a surprising history of mouse input in console games. The SNES Mouse is most remembered for Mario Paint, but it was supported in a number of other games, from strategy games like Nobunaga’s Ambition to shooters like Doom. The Sega Genesis also had a mouse peripheral, as did the Sega Saturn and PlayStation (the Nintendo 64 technically did as well, but it was only supported in one game that was only released in Japan for the short-lived Nintendo 64 Disk Drive attachment). As before, compatibility was strictly on a case-by-case basis, but a number of shooter, strategy, and adventure games did support it. The Sega Dreamcast went a step further and also had a keyboard peripheral, in large part due to its online functionality, but it was supported in a number of games. Granted, a lot of that in-game support was limited to text chat. The PlayStation 2 was in a similar situation, but uniquely used USB ports to allow any mouse and keyboard rather than bespoke console-compatible sets. Support was again limited, but it was there. There was also a GameCube controller with an entire keyboard built in, albeit only supported by one game. It makes a nice conversation piece, though.

I won’t go into great detail about subsequent generations, but suffice to say the status quo of being quietly present remained. The biggest shakeup to the state of affairs is the Nintendo Switch 2. The new Joy Con 2 can be detached from the grip and rotated 90 degrees to be used as a mouse. This is a novel idea, and notable for being one of the only times a console has come with a mouse in the box as a means of input. Shortly after this functionality was debuted, it was also confirmed that any standard USB mouse can be used as well. This was met with celebration from many, knowing that they could use a mouse without needing to awkwardly hold a Joy Con at an unusual angle. But the reactions were surprising to me because they seemed to imply USB mouse support was unique to the Switch 2, when competing consoles have had it for years, along with a number of compatible games. It would seem that a lot of people simply don’t know that it’s an option.

On some level, it’s forgivable to not know that, particularly if you don’t own one of the consoles yourself, as is the case with many Switch users. Sony and Microsoft hardly promote mouse and keyboard support as a selling point of their consoles. Furthermore, it’s hard to even know which games support them. Nowhere on the PlayStation Store does it indicate if it’s an option, for example, although there is a wide range of compatible games spanning from obvious choices like Call of Duty to more eclectic ones like Death Stranding and Ys (Notably, Death Stranding in its original PS4 release did not have mouse and keyboard support; this was added for the PC release and then implemented in the PS5 Director’s Cut version. The more recent Death Stranding 2, at present only on PS5, does not have mouse and keyboard support.).

What could be done to change this state of affairs? Perhaps the more germane question is why don’t more developers add mouse and keyboard support, particularly when it is supported on PC (most games being multiplatform these days)? For one, mouse and keyboard support can often feel like an obligation for PC games, not unlike the dubious controller mappings I described earlier. Yes, you technically can play Devil May Cry 5 with mouse and keyboard. Given an alternative, would you want to? Naturally, there’s not much demand for it on consoles. Other genres, notably shooters, have many adherents who swear by mouse and keyboard as being more precise and responsive than the analog sticks on controllers (gyroscopic motion input has leveled the playing field somewhat, but that’s a topic for another day). In this case, there’s a good argument for including mouse and keyboard support. The easiest answer to why it’s not included is that there’s little demand for it, but as long as its kept on the sideline with minimal support, that’s a bit of a self-defeating prophecy: nobody wants to use mouse and keyboard on consoles because games don’t support it.

Let’s look at it from the perspective of the console manufacturer. How could Sony, for instance, increase mouse and keyboard usage on PlayStation 5? As described above, it’s not a widely promoted feature (or really promoted at all), and you won’t find any mention of it on the PlayStation Store pages for most games. It can be mentioned in the product description, but not alongside the product features like online play, vibration, virtual reality, and others. It’s relatively easy to fix this: promote the compatibility more widely and make it readily apparent which games support it. The next step is a bit more involved. If Sony did want to increase mouse and keyboard usage, they should encourage their in-house developers to support it more. This shouldn’t be too difficult considering how many of their games are being released on PC now. Whatever keyboard and mouse support there is on PC, port over to the console version. They could go a step further and proactively include keyboard and mouse support before the games are ported to PC, but that seems unlikely. The last big thing I can think of that would boost engagement would be to release an official, PlayStation-branded mouse and keyboard set. This would certainly boost the profile of mouse and keyboard support on the console, and it would assuage any anxieties people have about which products are guaranteed to be compatible.

Of course, all of this is operating under the assumption that is something Sony would want. There’s certainly an argument to be made that they want people playing their games with their own controller. Yet there are still lots of third-party controllers on the market, and they’re not stopping anyone from using them. Furthermore, if they’re going to release their games on PC anyway, why not bridge the gap a little more? The difference between console and PC games is less than it’s ever been. The notion that console and PC gamers have opposing tastes and preferences just isn’t true anymore, if it was ever true to begin with.