Xbox Series X Quick Resume

The Xbox Series X Quick Resume Feature Is Even Better Than I Expected

I’ve been excited for Quick Resume for the Xbox Series X ever since Microsoft announced it earlier this year. As someone who is generally juggling a lot of games at once, and doesn’t have as much time to game as you’d expect, every second spent gaming is quite precious.

Getting hands-on with an Xbox Series X this week, with a non-final operating system has quickly blown me away and so far, that is largely thanks to Quick Resume.

I’ll try not to bore you with things that you already know. Testing Quick Resume, I was able to quickly go back and forth between titles such as Ori And The Will of the Wisps, Ori and the Blind Forest, Resident Evil 7, and Battletoads. So far, I’ve been able to get five games holding their state at once, but I’ve seen reports of up to seven or eight games at once. It all seems to depend on how much memory each game utilises.

This feature is meant to be used for single-player games, and that’s exactly how it works so far. Games such as Destiny 2 or Sea of Thieves would just boot back to the start of the game when moving to another game, and oddly enough The Outer Worlds didn’t seem to utilise the feature (presumably due to preview software that isn’t quite final yet), but in every other instance so far, it has worked flawlessly, taking about 5-6 seconds to get back to that exact same point in the game where I left off.

Here is when things get absolutely crazy, and where I’ve been blown away. Earlier today, I decided to move my Xbox Series X into my study in order to capture footage for this article. I booted up Resident Evil 7, which I quickly tested last night, and thanks to Quick Resume, I was literally straight back into the game at exactly the same point as to where I left it last night. That’s after unplugging my Xbox Series X for an extended amount of time and launching at least eight or nine games since moving the console between rooms. I haven’t been able to test it yet, but it’s supposed to work even after updating your console (which I have no reason not to believe at this point).

I can obviously only speak to my own personal experiences at this point, but this is a complete gamechanger. Not only will it be incredible to be able to jump between larger AAA games and shorter-burst games such as Tetris Effect or Dead Cells, but I can also literally move my Xbox Series X between two places without any interruption to my game whatsoever.

There are a few improvements I’d love to see. I would love to know if a game supports Quick Resume straight off the bat, as once or twice I’ve left a game, came back to it and it hasn’t (you’re only told when you come back to a game that is in a Quick Resume state). I’d also like a way to know how many games I can have in the Quick Resume state at once, but I understand this one might be tricky.

All-in-all though, improvements like quick load times were obvious at this point, but for Quick Resume alone, I couldn’t see myself wanting to back to an older console.


For more Xbox Series X hands-on impressions, news and deals, visit our Xbox Series X launch hub.