Xbox Series X Can Resume a Suspended Game Even After a Reboot

Microsoft kicked this week off with big news of the Xbox Series X's power and the company's commitment to one-time cross-gen purchases, but today we've learned about a new quality of life feature coming to the Series X: according to Microsoft's Larry Hryb, a.k.a. Major Nelson, the Xbox Series X can resume a suspended game even after an update and a system reboot.

Hryb invited Jason Ronald, Xbox's director of program management, on for an interview about the new Series X details Microsoft revealed on Monday. A few minutes into the show, Hryb and Ronald discuss Quick Resume, the Series X's new feature that allows players to have multiple games suspended at once—and, apparently, resume play post-reboot.

"I was switching back and forth just real quickly and seamlessly between games," Hryb tells Ronald, "but then I had to reboot because I had a system update. Then I went back to the game and went right back to it, so it survives a reboot."

According to the recent post from Xbox head Phil Spencer, Quick Resume is designed to let you "continue multiple games from a suspended state almost instantly, returning you to where you were and what you were doing, without waiting through long loading screens." On the podcast, Ronald says the feature is "powered by [the] custom-built SSD that's part of the Xbox Series X."

Improvements to suspend mode appear to be a big focus for both Microsoft and Sony. In September, Sony announced that the PlayStation 5 will drastically reduce the amount of power needed to keep a game suspended while in rest mode.

Both consoles are also going to support hardware accelerated ray tracing, which Ronald also covers on the podcast with Hryb. In addition to the better-known graphical applications of ray tracing hardware, Ronald mentions that developers "can even use it for things like spatial audio."

For more on Microsoft's next console, check out our guide to everything we've learned about the Xbox Series X so far.

Thanks, The Verge.