Seven Things that Brought Xbox One and PS4 Closer to PC
Are consoles becoming PCs? PS4 and XOne brought many surprising solutions that were considered standard on computers for a long time. The lines seem to become blurred.
Table of Contents
- Seven Things that Brought Xbox One and PS4 Closer to PC
- Graphics options – to you heart's content
- PC exclusives and ports
- Mouse and keyboard on console
- Junk shops
Mouse and keyboard on console
Microsoft owns two gaming platforms: Xbox and Windows. According to Steam Hardware Survey, over 95% of PC players use different versions of Windows. So it's no surprise that the company has been trying to blur the line between playing on PC and Xbox. One such effort was to introduce support for virtually all keyboards and mice for Xbox One, which could be useful when playing first-person shooter games.
Sony's console also generally supports keyboards and mice, but the setup seems much more problematic. The main difference is the number of games that actually support mouse and keyboard controls on consoles. There's a few more on Xbox than on PS4. Both consoles let us play games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Fortnite or War Thunder. Due to the increasing versatility of control setups, developers faced the problem of separate matchmaking for mouse and keyboard users to avoid giving them an edge. Unthinkable on X360 and PS3!
Backward compatibility
On PC, it's obvious that games released for Windows 7 or 8 will also work on Windows 10. Better: you can run most games for Windows 95, or even DOS. It sometimes requires a few stretches, but backward compatibility is deeply withing the PC DNA. The same applies to peripherals: mice, joysticks, steering wheels, etc.
But generally, consoles have been slow to embrace the practice. PS2 CDs don't work on PS3 and PS4. The same is true of the Xbox 360, although some attempts were made using emulation profiles. The real revolution, however, came with Xbox One, which allows you to run over 600 titles from the X360, usually after simply inserting the old disc. Microsoft has thus set out the only right path for the future, as both the PS5 and Xbox Series X will allow the entire library of current-generation games to be launched.
WE REMEMBER
Of course, backward compatibility isn't new on consoles – both PlayStation 2, Wii U offered it. In recent years, however, this has not been standard and the return to this solution is something we are very excited about.
