TWO-WAY STREET
Gizmodo has a feature on the upcoming QWERTY keyboard-enabled controller for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, expected this summer. They ask the right question:
"Why do you need that?
Well, you might have heard some rumors about the Xbox Spring Update over the weekend. Those were true.
So, the QWERTY isn't coming 'til Summer, but it'll make text input, and that Livekeyboard. messenger chat a lot more bearable than it would have been using just the onscreen."
As someone who's never quite gotten used to console game controllers, having something that looks like a QWERTY keyboard on a console, feels like a step in the right direction.
After all, Microsoft has made it easy to use Xbox 360 controllers to play PC games on Windows XP.
But as someone who's really more comfortable playing Halo on the PC than a console, I'd really be much pleased to see Microsoft go the other way: make it possible to plug in a PC keyboard and mouse into the USB connectors on an Xbox 360.
Of course that means we'd need the requisite software drivers to make them work, and that console games support the keyboard and mouse for game play as well.
It sometimes feels that we game players on PCs are the second-class citizens in this world of next-generation console-happy game players.
So it'd be nice for those of us not blessed with the eye-hand coordination to operate a controller to play Halo 2 on a console, to be able to use a geeky old PC keyboard and mouse to save the world.
Now I know the reason Microsoft probably doesn't do this already is more business reasons than technical. Allowing a keyboard and mouse to be used on the Xbox 360 is but one step to permitting more PC applications to live on the Xbox 360. This could potentially alienate Microsoft's PC vendor partners, who could possibly be impacted.
If so, this would be a short-sighted reason in a world where PC applications are moving into all sorts of new places, like online, and onto mobile devices of many types.
So here's hoping the device pictured in the upper left is complemented soon by QWERTY keyboards in larger sizes.
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