Disclaimer: I’ve rarely won a bet and I can never seem to win much when betting at the horse races. Now that’s out of the way, it looks as though Xbox One controller support for PC is coming “soon,” and what better place to announce it than E3, right?
Back in August 2013, support for the controller on PC was promised for some point this year, as confirmed by a Microsoft representative at the time.
Microsoft wanted to make sure it would ‘work properly’ with PC games, much like it’s Xbox 360 controllers do, because the “underlying technology” between the two controllers is different.
The firm would have to work around the “new wireless protocol, combined with the ability to work in ‘wired’ mode,” as well as adding features such as Impulse triggers.
“That means new software has to be written and optimized for the PC,” said the rep. “There is also some work that we need to do to make sure that existing PC games that support the Xbox 360 controller, will work with the Xbox One controller. While it seems trivial, it’s actually quite a bit of dedicated work for all that to be seamless for the user.
“We know people want to use the Xbox One controller on their PC, and we do too – we expect to have the functionality available in 2014.”
Despite these comments, it was rumored back in March Microsoft couldn’t get Xbox One controllers to work with PC, so it planned on releasing a PC-only pad.
Microsoft’s director of product management, Albert Penello, said the rumor was not true in the slightest.
“When the drivers become available, they will work with the existing controllers,” he said. “There is no plan to do a new, separate controller that only works on Windows. It will be the same as it is on Xbox 360 – the Xbox One controller you have today will work.
“That’s not to say that we may not ship also PC SKU of the Xbox One controller, much like we do on Xbox 360. How wireless will/could work is TBD. There are some options we are looking at.
“No more updates on the timeframe beyond what’s been publicly stated – the plan is this year.”
Cue Xbox Ambassador Major Nelson replying to a NeoGAF thread yesterday, stating support for the controller on PC is coming “soon, very soon.”
So, this leads me to think it could be revealed during Microsoft’s E3 presentation. AGAIN: note my disclaimer above. I’m not psychic and my “gut” is wrong 80% of the time. But I have a decent feeling about this particular horse.
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