Download speeds on consoles are notoriously bad, especially if your internet isn’t blazing fast at first. A new feature rolling out now on Xbox One and Xbox Series X / S for Xbox Insiders aims to improve on it by making it easier to suspend existing games while downloading new ones.
“Suspend Queue lets you download at full speed while allowing your game to resume (or quickly resume on Series X | S),” Xbox engineering lead Eden Marie wrote on Twitter yesterdayShe also shared a screenshot of what this new suspend feature will look like when it finally becomes available to the rest of the platform’s users:
Currently, downloads are much slower when you have a game open, as Xbox consoles reserve some of their connection capacity for the potential online functionality of what is being played. The new pause option allows you to put your current game on hold without opening a new one to get the faster download speed.
It’s a pretty detailed change, but also a very welcome change, especially if, like me, you’ve basically always paused games in the background. PS4 doesn’t currently have a similar option, and Switch will make sure to quit a game completely in order to download anything. In the meantime, on my Series S, I constantly delete old games and download new ones via Game Pass. Considering the sheer number of big games coming to the Netflix-style subscription service recently, it will definitely get close when it goes live for everyone.
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