July Xbox Update Now Available with “FastStart” Feature

[Megalith]

Microsoft rolled out a new Xbox update this week, which includes a new, somewhat self-explanatory feature dubbed “FastStart”: instead of having to wait until a title fully downloads, gamers will be able to jump into a game only after a certain percentage is loaded to disk. Not all titles support the feature, however.

Simply find the FastStart-enabled title you want to play in our catalog, hit “Download” and your console will take care of the rest. It’s that simple. What’s more, it’s now enabled for select English language titles in our Xbox Game Pass catalog, and will expand to more games in more languages over time.

 

[misterbobby]

Hasn't PS4 had this for years?

 

[WheresWaldo]

Still waiting on direct integration with Google Home or Alexa. I believe the "Fast Ring" is already testing this feature.

 

[SamuraiInBlack]

It doesn't matter because if a patch update for a game is available, you have to wait until it finishes anyway before you can play. My connection isn't slow by any means and yet for whatever reason, patch updating crawls for me.

 

[Jeffman]

Hasn't Xbox had this for years? I'm fairly certain that I've started games before they've been fully installed.

 

[westrock2000]

Hasn't PS4 had this for years?

Some games I have played on Xbox One have this feature, but it's usually a limited version of the game. Like just killing waves of enemies or something like that. It's not like what World Of Warcraft does where it downloads specifically the part of the game you need.

 

[Exavior]

Odd that I haven’t noticed that yet in the fast ring. Although I also was working 100 hour weeks for awhile so haven’t turned it on for a few weeks.

 

[AlphaAtlas]

Origin on PC had this for awhile too. I know you could play the beginning of Andromeda while the rest of the game was still downloading.

 

[shpankey]

Yup, also FIFA on Origin worked the same

 

[Exavior]

Origin on PC had this for awhile too. I know you could play the beginning of Andromeda while the rest of the game was still downloading.

You could do the same on the xbox. That is what is misleading about the original post and how this was worded and explained.

Right now certain games have limits so that if you download X amount of the game you can play the starting area, or the first level or a single race ….. But once you get there to the end of that piece you are done until everything else downloads.

What this features is supposed to be is that it will download everything in the order needed to play the games. So using Andromeda as the example. You would first download the starting area like you did, but then it would start to download everything needed for the 2nd planet so that you could keep playing while the game finished downloading. That way it is always downloading in the background hopefully quicker than you are playing the game.

 

[Shmee]

For those wondering, this is different from what Microsoft and even Sony were doing in the past. Most games have some sort of menu, character customization, or intro stage you can play around in after your game downloads a certain percentage, but this feature is more like streaming in that you can start and play the entire game as it downloads as you play. Though unlike streaming, you don't need to download it again. The idea is to make Game Pass more accessible because you can just try and play a game on a whim instead of having to remember to kick off the download from work or something.