A new Xbox feature is on the way that will finally address a long-standing issue on Microsoft’s platform: slow download speeds.
It’s likely that you will have encountered this problem yourself over the years but, basically, whenever you have a game running in the background on Xbox One or Xbox Series X/S consoles, your download speeds can slow to a crawl. The only way to hit the speeds you’d expect to see is to close a game entirely, which is rather annoying, to say the least.
Thankfully, though, this historic problem will be rectified soon. Microsoft has revealed that a new ‘suspend my game’ button is now available to beta testers in the Xbox Insider program that will let you keep your games running in the background, but won’t throttle download speeds as a result.
In a post on Twitter, engineering lead at Xbox Eden Marie shared that the ‘suspend my game’ button will let you download at full speed while making sure your game can be resumed.
Hey Xbox Insiders! Did you notice these changes rolling out now? Suspend in the queue will let you download at full speed while making sure your game remains resumable (or quick resume-able on Series X|S). New banners in the Full Library will take you to more useful categories! pic.twitter.com/L49winRpM0March 16, 2021
The timing couldn’t be more fortuitous now that the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S have arrived. Both consoles use Quick Resume, which lets you suspend and resume multiple titles. You can jump back in exactly where you left off, even when you shut down the system completely. Being able to keep these games running when you need the full speed of your bandwidth available, then, is a huge plus.
Marie also revealed that new banners are coming to the Full Library that will make it easier to see which Xbox Game Pass games you’ve added to your ‘Play later’ list, what’s been recently added and what’s leaving soon.
Slow and steady
The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S were criticized at launch for having the same UI as the Xbox One, as apart from having dynamic backgrounds, it didn’t do much to add to that ‘next-gen’ feel many were hoping for. However, Microsoft’s decision to continue to build upon its existing dashboard appears to be paying off, as not only is it able to make incremental improvements, it’s also not missing any key features that gamers have come to expect by starting from scratch.