Xbox Series X Quick Resume is as seamless as you hoped
TechRadar has had hands-on time with a not-final version of the Xbox Series X. Look out for our full preview impressions in the near future.
Microsoft's Quick Resume feature for the Xbox Series X isn't anything new. The Xbox One flirted with the feature, allowing players to jump into a game right where they left off, though this was often confined to certain games and players sometimes reported the feature being a bit buggy.
With the Xbox Series X, however, it seems Microsoft has refined the feature, which now utilizes the console's innovative Xbox Velocity Architecture - and my, what a difference it makes.
The purpose of Quick Resume is to allow you to continue a game from a suspended state pretty much instantly. So, within seconds, you can jump back into the game where you left off as if you never stopped playing - without having to sit through loading screens again. Not only that, but you can jump between multiple games that have been left in this suspended state in no time at all.
Having had some time with the Xbox Series X to test this feature, I don't think I can go back to life without Quick Resume.
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Seamless jumping
It's worth noting that, before you can actually make use of Quick Resume, you need to have actually loaded up the games you want to play at least once - to ensure it can be in the suspended state required for Quick Resume. If the feature is being utilized then a "Quick Resume" icon will appear in the top-upper-right-hand side of the screen.
My tactic to test this feature was to open a few different games, open a continue file from where I had left them last, so that I had four separate titles that I had left in a suspended state: Alan Wake, No Man's Sky, Tell Me Why and Sea of Thieves (we haven't had access to Xbox Series X software yet, so we can only test it with existing games).
The key to Quick Resume is not exiting a game entirely. So, for example, once I loaded Alan Wake, I hit the Xbox button my controller and then loaded up Tell Me Why. With both left in a mid-game state, I found I could jump from being in a timberyard as Alan Wake to being Alyson Ronan in a convenience store within 11.4 seconds - by pressing the Xbox button on the controller and selecting the game from the sidebar. That's from gameplay to gameplay - no loading screens. If I wanted to access Tell Me Why from the Xbox dashboard home screen, selected as the current game I was playing, the time from the dashboard to gameplay was 2.7 seconds.
So what about No Man's Sky? The time to jump from Tell Me Why's convenience store to being stood in the same spot in No Man's Sky that I left off took 14 seconds. It then took 13.7 seconds to go from No Man's Sky back to Tell Me Why. I could jump from Alan Wake, to No Man's Sky, to Tell Me Why seamlessly in 26 seconds. While I don't need to access that many games that quickly, it really shows just how powerful the feature is.
Even when I turned the Xbox Series X off completely, I was able to Quick Resume the games I had been playing beforehand, though in some instances I did have to load them up completely again. But, considering this was a rare occasion - and usually when I started stacking more than four games in a suspended state - that's pretty good going.
But what about multiplayer?
On top of Tell Me Why, Alan Wake and No Man's Sky, I also stacked Sea of Thieves on my list of Quick Resume titles. Microsoft hasn't stated if there's a limit to the number of titles that you can have in a suspended state at one time, but we found more than four to start taking its toll on the machine. If I stacked more than four games in a suspended state, then I found that some required a full boot up again.
I would say that four games is probably the sweet spot, and who really needs more than four games on the go at once anyway?
As an online multiplayer game, Sea of Thieves works a bit differently to the other titles. It wouldn't be feasible to allow players to suspend mid-play online gameplay, or we would just have a bunch of AFK players in the servers.
As I was mid-game in Sea of Thieves, I decided to jump into No Man's Sky, and then jump back to Sea of Thieves to see exactly how this worked. As expected, I was removed from the game - as I should be - but I was able to Quick Resume from the title screen. Sea of Thieves does offer you the chance to immediately jump back into the group you left and doing that doesn't take long at all - after you've skipped past the intro video. That's down to how super-fast the Xbox Series X load times are - but we'll discuss that at length in the near future.
But why would you need all those games?
You may be wondering, "but why do I need to jump between four games at once?" And, to be honest, it's unlikely you'll be doing so often with single-player titles. But, combined with Xbox Game Pass, it's the perfect feature for experimenting with the service's huge library. As long as you've got them suspended, you can jump between games and test out which is for you.
But, in the long term, Quick Resume looks to be especially handy for those who want to quickly jump into a multiplayer game with friends then jump back into the single-player adventure they were playing beforehand - all without the pain of booting up a game and battling through load screens each time you try. While our impressions are based on a non-final version of the Series X, it seems that's what Microsoft's intent is long-term.
In addition, Quick Resume, as it stands, is just handy. I never realized how much time I waste booting up a game each time I want to play. Instead, Quick Resume sees me back in the action within seconds. And, if I decide (as I often do) that actually I want to play another game instead, I can quickly jump over to that if I wish.
Microsoft seems to have finally got Quick Resume right on the Xbox Series X - and we can't wait to put it through its paces when console launches.
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