For those of you in the Xbox Insider Program, you are probably already playing around with this new feature, but for the rest of us you might be excited to learn that Keyboard Mapping is coming to a controller near you.
The feature is currently live to those in the insider program and it allows users to map any single keyboard key or a combination of modifier keys to a button on your controller.
Currently, only the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller Series 2 and the Xbox Adaptive Controller will support this feature.
The mapping allows you to change any button, for example, the Right Bumper, to a single letter like B or you can add multiple modifier keys to the B, like Ctrl + Shift + B. For now, only a single “non-modifier” key can be added to the combination. Modifier keys include Ctrl, Shift, Alt and Windows.
This is exciting for many reasons, one, it will provide those with accessibility needs an easier-to-use platform when using a controller, and two, it can give a few games that extra quality of life where you can access certain menus or abilities that require multiple button presses on a keyboard with a single button press on your controller.
Of course, this feature works best for games that support keyboard input, which Xbox says there are over 100 on console and almost every game on PC.
They haven’t given us a date as to when the feature will come out to the general public, but if you are excited to try it out for yourself you can sign up for the Insider Program on the Xbox site.
For more details, check out the blog post from Xbox and see how setting up keyboard mapping will look.