The One Xbox Feature PC Can't Compete With

Shortly after the reveal of the Xbox Series S, Microsoft gave gamers a look at the much-hyped Quick Resume feature. Quick Resume allows users to leave multiple games suspended in the background. This way, gamers can drop in and out of each one as easily as clicking on a new tab on a computer desktop. Early reviews of the Xbox Series X have referred to Quick Resume as quite literally a game-changing function. Quick Resume may in fact be the feature that gives Xbox an edge over the competition, particularly PC.

In a review of Quick Resume, TechRadar's Vic Hood praised the feature for its speed and ease of use. With four games suspended at once, Hood was able to seamlessly transition from one game to the next within seconds. There were no loading times, either. According to Hood, these transitions were literally "from gameplay to gameplay." Hood also noted that turning the system off didn't completely close his suspended games. Though a few of the games had to be loaded up again, they remained in the Quick Resume queue, which will prove useful for gamers who want to focus on a certain group of titles for a little while.

But what of Xbox's closest competitor? The PlayStation 5 and PS5 Digital Edition will be released shortly after the Series X and Series S. Fans are right to wonder how Sony's new consoles intend to compete with Quick Resume. 

Sony has yet to confirm whether or not the PlayStation 5 will have a comparable feature, but there is reason to believe that something similar to Quick Resume is in the works. A patent leaked earlier this year for a feature referred to as a "unified user interface." The idea here would be that users could pull up a menu without having to tab out of a particular function. While it's not entirely clear if this new user interface would allow for games to be suspended in the background of other functions, it's not much of a stretch to imagine Sony implementing such a function. After all, since Quick Resume is proving to be such a popular feature, it would make sense for Sony to attempt its own take on it.

Despite the apparent edge that Xbox has over PC, some gamers have tried to argue a different viewpoint. For instance, Reddit user Predator8137 has pointed out that there are ways to suspend programs in Windows, which has a somewhat similar effect to Quick Resume. However, the two functions work very differently.

As explained by Predator8137, "A suspended game doesn't use any computing resource. You can suspend it at any time, and use your PC for any other activity without the game wasting energy or slowing the PC down in the background. Any time you want to continue playing, just hit resume, and you can continue at exactly where you left it instantly, without any loading time." As explained by Predator8137, this can be extended to multiple games or programs at the same time. One user was excited by this prospect, even though they described the process as a bit "clunky." 

At first glance, it seemed as though Predator8137 cracked the code when it comes to a Quick Resume-style feature on PC. Some other users on Reddit were thanking Predator8137 for shining a light on a feature that some folks weren't aware of. However, this method of suspending multiple programs at once has been heavily disputed by a few other Redditors.

For instance, a user called Anxious-Dare pointed out that a suspended program is "still going to be resident in RAM though, and if you reboot it or otherwise kill the process then the next time it's run it'll be starting from scratch and any unsaved progress is gone." As explained by Anxious-Dare, Quick Resume "seems to be like hibernation but for a process, saving [its] RAM to disc ... and then loaded back into the exact same state, with the memory free for something else in the meantime." 

In other words, the PC process described by Predator8137 isn't quite the same as Quick Resume, and suspended PC game applications will eat up RAM that may be needed by other programs. So technically, yes, PCs do provide a somewhat similar function, but Xbox's Quick Resume works better in practice.

Despite the fact that Xbox clearly has a leg up on other companies in this arena, the company has been refreshingly kind regarding its competitors. While Xbox has made a few jokes at Sony's expense on social media, Xbox also notably deleted a recent shot that it took at the PlayStation 5. After making a joke about the design of the PS5 on Twitter, Xbox apparently thought better of it and took the original tweet down. It seems that Xbox is trying to win based solely on the merits of its product — like Quick Resume — rather than taking cheap shots at the competition.