Microsoft has been hard at work in the background trying to improve the gaming experience on Xbox systems, and now they have managed to shave 5 seconds off the boot time of the Xbox Series S and X.
An obvious way of improving the console experience is, of course, making better (and cheaper) games. But something that is often overlooked (especially by Sony), but is equally important, is the experience outside of games. That includes loading times, something the current generation of consoles already excels at, with both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles nearly instantly booting up games.
But Microsoft is still trying to push the boundaries of what is fast enough. Industry inside Tom Warren shared a comparison of the difference that the new update has made in terms of boot times.
Microsoft is speeding up the Xbox Series X / S boot time. Around 5 seconds have been shaved off, and the changes are coming in an update soon. Details here: https://t.co/V6qrkJddnX pic.twitter.com/TPPjm58BW7
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) July 25, 2022
This was confirmed when Josh Munsee, director of Xbox, talked to The Verge, where he said:
[the company created] a shorter boot-up animation (~4s) from the original boot-up animation (~9s), helping to reduce the overall startup time.
Who Does This Help?
All Xbox Series X|S users will instantly notice the difference. It will be especially useful to people who keep their consoles in Energy Saver mode instead of Standby mode.
The difference between the two modes is that one completely powers off the console, and the other, as the name suggests, only puts it in standby mode. Fully powering off your console is recommended since it not only saves power but in case of a power surge, your console is more likely to survive. And this change makes it easier to power off your console completely.
Microsoft understands how this could end up saving power and has recently made Energy Saver mode the default option on all Xbox consoles, alongside the option for background downloading. Let’s hope Sony sees this and continues to improve the user experience of the PlayStation 5 since it already lacks the quick resume feature but is otherwise quite snappy.
