A Microsoft spokesperson recently told CVG that the Xbox One controller shipping with the console this holiday season will eventually be compatible with Windows PC in 2014. This will be accomplished by a Microsoft-developed driver, and will supposedly allow the new controller to work with PC games that already support the current Xbox 360 controller for Windows.
“The Xbox One controller, although it looks similar in many ways, shares no underlying technology with the current Xbox 360 controller,” the rep said. “New wireless protocol, combined with the ability to work in ‘wired’ mode, and the addition of features like Impulse triggers, means that new software has to be written and optimized for the PC.”
The rep went on to explain that, as previously mentioned, there will also need to be work done to make sure that the existing PC games supporting the Xbox 360 controller will work with the new one. “While it seems trivial, it’s actually quite a bit of dedicated work for all that to be seamless for the user,” the rep said. “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.”
