The beautiful thing about modern consoles is the consistent quality-of-life improvements by means of OS updates. A new update for Xbox Series consoles will now enable pre-load updates for upcoming games. In other words, it’s update-ception.
Hit the ground running
In the same way that having access to updates is a good thing, it’s also a bit of annoyance when it comes to gaming in this day and age. Titles are often frequently updated, especially if they’re live service-oriented.
Background automatic updates helps to alleviate some of the friction that’s involved in keeping all the different games in your collection primed and ready to launch. But, pre-release games play by a different set of rules.
Xbox consoles have long had the ability to pre-load the core contents of an upcoming game, allowing the bulk of the game’s data to be ready for when launch day comes and the entire game is unlocked. However, there’s typically a “day one patch” that’s rolled out, forcing users to have to wait even longer after launch for the new download to complete.
Thus, this new QoL feature will ensure that new games are totally ready at launch so user’s can just jump in on launch day.
This new update pre-load feature is currently available to those enrolled in the Xbox Insider Program; an openly-available beta program for those interested in test-running in-progress features. It shouldn’t be long before it’s rolled out to the next public update that will be downloadable by all Xbox Series console owners.
While it’s great that such a feature is finally making its way to the system, it seems that it will only be truly beneficial to those who pre-order upcoming digital titles. A physical copy will likely not have the latest version of the game on it, so that dreaded pre-update waiting period after popping it into the system is bound to continue.
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