The Truth About Xbox Series X's Quick Resume Feature

Of all the potentially exciting next-generation tech offered by the Xbox Series X and Series S, there's one well-hyped feature that promises to be a true game-changer. The console's Quick Resume allows players to quit a game and pick up exactly where it left off. 

Okay, right — it's not truly new. Although the Xbox One had a similar feature, the previous Quick Resume function has proven to be buggy and troublesome over the years, with users complaining about its use in various games. Microsoft has refined Quick Resume to be more useful and more seamless, and the industry is taking notice. A reviewer for TechRadar said, "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."

So what makes the new Xbox's Quick Resume feature so much better than the previous version? There are two major factors at play here. 

In the description of a video from September showcasing the capabilities of Quick Resume, Xbox highlighted the capabilities of the feature, saying you can switch "almost instantly" from a suspended state back to gameplay.

The video itself shows how quickly you can move between several different games at once, and it does look relatively instantaneous, with maybe a few seconds of loading time. You don't lose any progress, which is important. If there are several games you play more often than any others in a given period of time, this will make things much easier. 

"With current gen consoles, you can resume the last game you played," Xbox Wire editor Will Tuttle pointed out in a post. "However, since most players play (on average) three to four games a month, the team wanted to give them the option to switch between them easily and quickly. With Quick Resume, you can resume multiple games with the press of a button, instantly jumping back into the action, right where you left off, for multiple titles at the same time."

Early reviews suggest the Xbox Series X can hold up to six games in a suspended state at the same time.

One of the features of the new Quick Resume makes it much more functional than before: You can actually turn your console off and still come back to the game you were playing in a flash. This means that losing power in the middle of a game will theoretically no longer be an issue. Other convenience factors may very quickly become apparent as well.

"Since game states will be stored directly in the system's SSD, they'll even persist after you turn off the console, unplug it entirely, or even take a system update," Tuttle explained. "One of the testers on the team unplugged his console for a week, then took an update, and was still able to continue right where he left off without so much as a loading screen."

This well-thought-out feature may serve to distinguish the Xbox Series X from the PlayStation 5 at launch, because the PlayStation 5 currently does not appear to have a Quick Resume equivalent. However, the load times on both systems are much faster than before, which may make Quick Resume less of an issue overall. It remains to be seen if this is makes a difference in who comes out ahead in the console wars this fall.