When Microsoft put the made-up phrase ‘Smart Delivery’ into all of its Xbox Series X / S marketing last year, it just seemed like some empty buzzwords. Of course, all games would just work after you install them on your expensive new hardware, whether they support Microsoft’s slogan or not. Not quite!
Nothing has bridged the gap between the standard operating procedure for next-generation games and the Microsoft Xbox Series X / S Smart Delivery feature on the display like Marvel’s AvengersThe next-gen version of the loot RPG went live yesterday and proved to be a huge headache for those looking to upgrade from PS4 to PS5. First, they had to make sure that both versions of the game were downloaded and updated on the console. Then they had to migrate their stored data. Hours and tens of GB of data later, they were able to remove the PS4 version and finally start playing.
All of this, of course, was made a bit more complicated by how inconvenient it can be to actually check which versions of a game you have downloaded on your PS5 and whether they have been updated. Marvel’s Avengers itself also fared well, with the in-game option to migrate save data for some players not showing. It took Crystal Dynamics several tweets and a dedicated one Frequently asked questions on the PlayStation website to explain the process, which was not intuitive enough to make many people’s eyes glassy after reading the instructions. “Living in the future with Sony here,” tweeted Forbes writer Paul Tassi
Things just worked on Xbox Series X / S.
G / O Media can receive a commission
Microsoft describes Smart Delivery as a “new technology” that lets you “buy the Xbox One and Xbox Series X versions of the game all at once, and the best version of the game is automatically delivered to your console regardless of generation – no additional steps required. What additional steps may be required? many of us wondered last year when this explanation was rolled out. Used to simply having our data cataloged and transferred by big tech companies from one phone and computer to another, the idea that your games and saved data wouldn’t do the same when moving from current consoles to new ones seemed absurd. After all, this wasn’t Nintendo we were talking about.
And yet, time and time again, Smart Delivery has proven to be a real thing to solve a real problem that otherwise plagues the transition to next-gen consoles. I now assume that I can turn on my Series S, browse the Microsoft Store, Game Pass, and my existing account library, and play in seconds, without any questions. Then I go back to my PS5 and find myself running out of space already because I downloaded duplicate PS4 versions of different games. Also my Spirit of Tsushima Saved data has not been transferred – time to boot PS4 backup. Jesus Christ yes, I am sorry I disconnected you without warning last time.
What can I say, I thought it would be the last time.