Everyone hates booting up their console and trying to play a game only to be hit with the dreaded update notification. It wouldn’t matter so much if updates weren’t getting bigger every year. Well, Xbox is using the power of Game Pass to try to test a workaround.
Instead of being stuck waiting for an update to fully download, a new feature rolling out to Xbox Insiders will let players boot the game up with cloud streaming if they have a Game Pass subscription and the game in question supports it. “You’ll also see the option to launch with cloud gaming directly from the game card when a game is installing or updating,” reads a new post over on Xbox Wire. “That means less waiting and more time playing.”
Console makers have tried other workarounds, like letting your games automatically update overnight even when the machine is in rest mode. And we’ve long lived with the promise of being able to boot a game and begin playing before it fully installs. But none of these features has made as big a dent in the hassles of modern gaming as many hoped.
It’s possible the cloud gaming feature could end up in a similar boat, either taking too long to get the game running or streaming it at a very poor resolution because of the download going on in the background. Still, I’m glad to see Xbox trying to come up with novel ways to streamline the console experience.
The latest update preview going out to Xbox Insiders also increases the maximum Gamertag length to 15 characters, adds Xbox 360 Achievements to Game Hub pages, and makes it easier to Wishlist games directly from the Game Card instead of requiring you to be directly in the store. It’s part of a new concerted push by Microsoft to improve the Xbox console experience at a faster clip.