One of the biggest highlights for many previewing the Xbox Series X was its Quick Resume feature, but gamers are now discovering that many next-gen optimized titles don't support it. In a perfect world, Quick Resume would let players keep their games in suspended animation as they switch between a handful of titles. Once loaded back up, the game would pop players right back into the world, bypassing loading, menus, and opening splash screens. Combined with the console's impressively short loading times across the board, the new Xbox is poised to let players spend less time waiting and more time playing.
However, the launch of the Xbox Series X has been less than perfect, as spotlighted by how many delayed releases have punched holes in the initial lineup of games. The biggest is Halo Infinite, which was supposed to carry the console into the next-generation and prove that Microsoft was dedicated to first-party support. Other titles that were initially supposed to be available in an optimized state in the console's first few weeks include Control, Cyberpunk 2077, and the Xbox exclusive The Medium. With the ongoing global pandemic forcing studios to adjust to a whole new way of creating games, delays like this are to be expected, and this might also be why Quick Resume is turning out to be a half-baked feature right at launch.
After numerous reports of uneven quick resuming on launch day, outlets like TrueAchievements put the feature to test, discovering that several optimized titles were seemingly unable to take advantage of the feature. The affected titles by their tests include Watch Dogs: Legion, Dirt 5, The Falconeer, Forza Horizon 4, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and NBA 2K21. The feature was able to work on Gears 5, Tetris Effect: Connected, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Gears Tactics, and Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Microsoft's Jason Ronald has acknowledged the issues on Twitter, saying that they've disabled the feature for certain optimized titles and are fixing it on a platform level.
Even when it is working, there are certain aspects of Quick Resume that make it less useful than it could be. For one, there's no running tally that users can see of which games are currently saved with Quick Resume and which saves will be lost when a new title is launched. Considering that the feature is supposed to be a fire and forget solution that lets players not worry about save games, having no warning when a save is going to disappear is frustrating.
While Quick Resume on Xbox Series X|S is not at full capacity at the moment, it seems like the feature will eventually be back at full strength. When one thinks of how similar the Xbox and PlayStation consoles are this generation, it would behoove Microsoft to fix the issue in a way that doesn't make it unstable. Quick Resume is one of the main advantages Xbox has over the competition, but having it turn on and off at random intervals with an unknown number of games could paint it as unreliable and unpopular in the eyes of gamers, a state where many once-promising technologies go to die.
Source: Jason Ronald/Twitter, TrueAchievements