Xbox Series X to Allow 'Suspend and Resume' for Multiple Games at Once

Microsoft revealed that the Xbox Series X is capable of suspending and resuming multiple games at once, unlike Xbox One consoles.

[phoenixwing]

Thats a pretty cool feature

[mikeslemonade]

Day 1! And not buying overrated Halo

[Alexious]

How do you know it'll be overrated?

[RosweeSon]

I never really liked halo but when I had an S for a few months really enjoyed the halo collection. Series is a bit stale now tho the original devs sold up says it all same with gears they’d run their course so the devs jumped ship.
Not buying console day one for fifa and forza does look interesting but no rush for me. I’ll wait for a slim or cheaper model once the games have arrived.

[Ausbo]

You don’t have to. Get gamepass and it’s free

[Kingthrash360]

No its get games pass and its 9.99 a month

[CaptainHenry916]

But Halo is Microsoft best IP

[CaptainHenry916]

One of the funny looking console of all time lol

[chrisoadamson]

It can be placed vertically and horizontally

[CaptainHenry916]

I'm just not feeling the design or the name. It's actually confusing 😂 going to have to do a wait and see approach again with Microsoft 🤦‍♂️

[Abnor_Mal]

Sounds cool, but is it for physical, digital, or both?

[xxShadow-Shockxx]

im assuming digital only

[Gazondaily]

Such a sick feature!

[TK-66]

We should wait for confirmation, but I think it might be safe to assume we could do so with a game as long as the physical disc is still in the system and then a downloaded title. Ofc we should push for clarity from MS.

[No Way]

Maybe the reason the case is so big, is cause there's more than one rom. 🤔

[DaDrunkenJester]

That cant be a serious question, right?

[xTonyMontana]

I think it's a fair question as to whether or not it will support disc based games too. Say one disc game and one downloaded game for example.

[King_Noctis]

Ask yourself, how many disc tray will it have? Then you’ll find the answer.

[Applejack]

Not gonna lie, I had to reread his question twice to get it lol.

[ForNgoods]

Maybe you could be suspend a game on disc and also a digital game. I'm thinking this is what the OP intended.

[Sitdown]

You do realize disc players in the past could resume from multiple disc right? At least for movies, and probably would be able to do it with games.

[Kingthrash360]

Most likely answer is it's just like the xbox one's original plan to make all games digital...put in a disc it downloads the games digitally, disc becomes demo

[DivoJones]

Getting a bit of flack which is a bummer. Realistically I'd say as long as the disc remains in the drive it should be able to suspend a disc-based game just like a digital game, and ejecting it COULD keep the game state and simply say you need to re-insert the disc. It'll definitely work better with digital games.

[Abnor_Mal]

Yes that's what I was thinking, that it may be possible to eject a disc with the function, then put in another disc start play that game. Later suspend the second game, eject the disc and put the first disc back and be able to continue where you left off. Also being able to do the same with digital or both.

But of course everyone without actually trying to understand what I was saying, would rather jump on me and dog pile. I guess we will find out later and if I'm correct that would be remarkable.

Thank you for taking the time to see I was asking an honest question, that I thought was not out of the realm of possibility, and for giving a non hostile response.

Cheers.

[rainslacker]

Could suspend and allow you to take the disc out, but you'd have to put the disc back in to resume.

Feature is probably more fluid with digital though.

I think it's a nice feature myself. Sometimes I like to take breaks from bigger games to try other things.

[Spurg]

Obviously, physical because you know you can fit in 2 disk at a time /s

[ziggurcat]

Both because I assume you can boot a disc-based game, and a digitally-based game then suspend them both at the same time.

[Abnor_Mal]

I think so too, but I think that the system will be able to suspend more than one disc game. When inserting a suspended game back into the drive it re-read the disc and finds its suspend bookmark, and continue from that mark. I would think MS would figure out a way to make something like that possible quicker than I think Sony would.

If you could suspend a disc game remove it from the drive, put in another game and the system resumes that game and play continues. Then the same thing for a third disc game, suspends places a bookmark, remove the game and re insert the first disc and the system resumes exactly from the point the player was at before ejecting the game.

Same could be done with both physical and digital, and both together in any combination.

Don't understand why people can't see that as a realistic possibility, but guess some aren't visionaries, until the vision is placed in front of them like here it is. Then they're like oooohhhh okay I get it now.

Of course I could be wrong, but what's the harm of speculating. Groupthink.

[ziggurcat]

"I think so too, but I think that the system will be able to suspend more than one disc game. When inserting a suspended game back into the drive it re-read the disc and finds its suspend bookmark, and continue from that mark."

That is entirely possible.

[Wikkid666]

Consoles don't read from physical media.

[JEECE]

It's baffling that people still pretend not to know this six years after the PS4 and XONE launches. Discs just install the full digital game. It's why it's so annoying to see people still justifying buying physical to "save hard drive space." Obviously that used to be a legitimate reason (PS3/360) but it hasn't been for a long time.

[mcstorm]

The issue I gave with this is what happen s when the console/game has an update and auto download will it run from this state or start the game again? I get the point of this feature but at the same time the amount of times I've gone to use it and the console/game has had an update it starts the game from cold again. That's something that needs looking at imo.

[JEECE]

It's funny that everyone is giving you crap for suggesting physical, when even this gen on XONE and PS4 physical games don't run from the disc; the disc just installs the digital game, and then the disc basically serves as a license check so you don't sell it after installing.

So the idea that it will be some sort of technical problem for the console to "remember" where you were on the disc is nonsensical; games no longer run from the disc.

[rainslacker]

I can see why they'd be dubious on physical games, since the disc is still used for DRM purposes.

Not that I think he needs to receive flack over his comment though. I find it a perfectly valid question myself. Obviously you'd probably still need to swap discs if multiple games are physical, but that doesn't mean that it can't just start up the game again where you left off.

[Abnor_Mal]

I'm sorry for my ignorance of how consoles and computers in general work. I've said it before that I do not know much about such things, so I felt there was no harm in asking a question. I guess I was wrong, and realise people would rather ridicule that to provide clarification. Maybe I should have gone with my original thought of just making a snark comment about the look and name of the console, but i then had the thought so i asked the question.

Out of all the comments my question generated only a few people answered me instead of talking past me. And I thank them for taking the time to do so, I will also that you and Wikkid666 for providing clarity.

Now, since you say that the games are not read from the disc but fully installed on the hard drive. It seems you still need the disc to be reinserted into the system to read the license. I really do not see how that is so different that what I said although I did not know exactly how to pharse the question and my follow up statements.

Anyway thanks to everyone for expanding the conversation and delivering nuggets of knowledge here and there. I do learn from my mistakes and will remember what was explained.

[paulust2002]

Ha, would be awesome to have a 10 cd swap system like old cd players lol

[ShrektheHulk]

I come up against this all the time with my Switch. nice add!

[Sm00thNinja]

What do you mean you cant suspend and resume multiple games on Switch? Am I misunderstanding you?

[Cernunnos]

Not multiple games

[ShrektheHulk]

yeah, if I'm playing pokemon and want to switch over to smash brothers I get a notice saying that I have to close the other app to open a new one. or is there something I've missed this whole time?

[Inzo]

Doesnt the PS4 do that already?

[The_Blue]

No. Lmao

[Inzo]

Did you really laugh ass off or did you just wright lmao for emphasis? Otherwise it really doesnt take much to amuse you does it?

[2pacalypsenow]

It does but for a single game, both Xbox one and Ps4 do this.

[Segata]

All 3 do it.

[Ghostbob]

You can have a game and an app like youtube at the same time but not 2 games.

[Sm00thNinja]

No. It can do it for 1. Xbox can as well

[KickSpinFilter]

Just one game.

[xTonyMontana]

No, you can have one game and one app running simultaneously but that's it.

[specialguest]

That's a pretty useful feature if it works as intended. On another note, I'm glad the series X went with a simplistic yet elegant design. Let's hope the ps5 doesn't use that hideous looking dev kit design(vomit).
https://i1.wp.com/metro.co....

[Ripsta7th]

is it shaped like a V because is the 5th PS?

[specialguest]

That's what it looks like to me

[2pacalypsenow]

They wont, have you seen the Ps3 and Ps4 Dev kits?

Do they look like the Ps3 and Ps4?

[generic-user-name]

Facts don't matter, spreading misinformation while you can is the game.

[Segata]

When do dev kits look like final hardware? Dev kits are dev kits for a reason. Just look up PS4 dev kit. It's a giant behemoth.

[AnubisG]

I sure hope not. That PS5 devkit looks like something designed in the late 90's.

After the Xbox Series X design, I'm sure it will look better because that design of the XSX is just a plain box.

[2pacalypsenow]

That's pretty cool.

[SyntheticForm]

This is going to be one powerful console.

[ReadyPlayer22]

This was probably inspired with Game Pass. It's the perfect feature for a service like that.

[NeoGamer232]

It was probably inspired by the SSD drive. Really, all they are doing is taking a snapshot of memory when you switch games. Then, when you switch back restoring the snapshot.

You can't quickly do that with traditional drives.

[SinkingSage]

It was probably inspired by PCs being able to do this for decades.

[Jay767]

The ps5 probably do the same thing still a cool feature.

[PSGuardian]

Really nice feature, I will assume this will be an iteration that’s on all next gen consoles. Perfect as I like to normally have a multiplayer game and single player game going around the same time. I just hope they don’t go silly with allowing 10 suspends that just eats up and uses more resources for features and takes away from the games resources.

How many games to you really think you would play at once?

[DivoJones]

I've heard that the Xbox is already using Hyper-V as the backbone for the Xbox OS, so it only makes sense that a higher spec machine with more RAM could juggle more game states simultaneously. I'd also hope it'd allow it to keep backwards compatible games in a save-state as well. Right now if you run a 360 or OG Xbox BC game it doesn't handle resuming particularly well, it usually has to relaunch the emulated OS and start the game from scratch.

[isarai]

So save states basically? COOL!

[ApocalypseShadow]

Basically. Been doing that for years with emulators. It's cool though.

[Segata]

Neat but why does anyone need to? Reminds me of 5 disc CD changers. It sounded impressive but never knew anyone who really used it.

[Nitrowolf2]

I do it on PC, sometimes I want to take a break from a SP game without losing progress (if theres no save area close) to jump and play mp games

[TK-66]

I actually do it when I'm waiting during matchmaking for Dota 2. Play a little round of Hearthstone. Very good feature, but I'd like it if you could have the option to see whats happening on screen for the other title while actively playing the other. I think thats where this feature will find really shine.

Waiting for a friend to join your lobby in something like Halo? Play a round of another game like COD while you're waiting or make some progress on a single player game.

[Sm00thNinja]

I play multiple games at once. It's a quality of life improvement. Not necessary but appreciated

[Rhythmattic]

Fark..... Rum And Coke through the nose moment.....

That was a Rippa

[rainslacker]

I use the suspend feature all the time on the current consoles. that's for one game. But sometimes, I like to just go play another game, so it'd be nice to just suspend a game and start up a new one I may want to play for the night.

What I'd like most is that those suspended games are saved even if the power goes out. Something the PS4 doesn't do now.

[chiefJohn117]

Jumping from 1 game to another without load up is something every gamer would use.

[ScootaKuH]

Exactly, it's nothing more than a time saver, not that it takes long to switch games anyway. It just seems a bit pointless to me, when you can only physically play one game at a time

[Veneno]

This is a killer feature. We need many more of these kinds of quality of life improvements. My number one is the ability to connect any Bluetooth headset you want to the console. Screw proprietary headset bullcrap.

[THC CELL]

Not really a feature I need but I'm sure it will be on all next gen consoles

[KaiPow]

Jumping between a single player game and a few matches with the squad without closing either game... Been wanting that for a long time!

[ShadowWolf712]

...this is a feature people wanted?

[rainslacker]

I don't really want it, but I certainly would use it if it were there. It's one of those things I could live without, but nothing wrong with having it.

[ShadowWolf712]

I can't really see the usefulness. Just seems like a good way to eat up RAM and resources.

[rainslacker]

RAM shouldn't be effected. The memory would be dumped to a file on the hard drive,and retrieved when you bring it back up. Would take up hard drive space, so pausing a lot of games may eat up one's hard drive.

[ScootaKuH]

Not me. I've never really found it a problem to quit one game and start another. I don't play multiple games at the same time. I like to spend quality time focusing on one game

[Italiano1234567]

If it can't make me waffles in the morning i don't want it

[NeoGamer232]

I'm sure if you turn it on and put the frozen waffles on the top of the green light grill it will cook them good!

[timotim]

Very cool! Could be used to compare games in the same series to one another...FM7 to FM8 on the same track for example. Bring it on!

[NealGamby]

This would entail having multiple games worth playing at once, Microsoft.

[NeoGamer232]

Well they already have Halo Infinite, Hellblade, and Everwild announced. And in the XB announcement there was an implicit announcement for Forza Motorsports 8. Doesn't seem like it lacks games already.

Oh and you can play everything available on Xbox One, the 360 BC games, and the XB BC games. Day One it looks like the library will start with the largest library available to a console ever.

[NealGamby]

Those are basically the exact same games that are available now and Xbox is still in third place with the common sentiment being that it doesn't have any games compared to the PS4. You're not really making a point.

[GOULDYBOBS]

I have never felt the need to switch games that quickly

[chiefJohn117]

Lol I have.

[GOULDYBOBS]

Perhaps you need better games

[FallenAngel1984]

I was just thinking about this kind of feature last week

[Mr Logic]

Am I missing something? This sounds neat and all, don't get me wrong, but if this console really does have no loading times then what is the point of this feature?

[chiefJohn117]

You don't have to wait on forced company logo screens and these consoles will have load screens it'll just be quicker than previous gens. This will still save additional minutes. It's like asking why allow multiple tabs when you have 5G speed to load up websites quickly. (See how stupid that sound?)

[Mr Logic]

Well I've been hearing about No Loading and not Quicker Loading, hence my comment, so there's no reason to attack my intellect.

Also your comparison is dumb as fuck. Multiple tabs can be used at the same time, and that's not the case with games.

[WGAF]

Hum....maybe I can play other SP games while doing AFK life skills in Black desert simultaneously. That would help.

[rainslacker]

It won't let you play multiple games at once. That would be true multi-tasking. This will just save the memory state of your current game, suspend it, then allow you to start another game without having to shut down the game you were playing. You can suspend and resume games now on consoles, but only for one game at a time. Saving the memory state basically just dumps the data stored in memory into a file on the hard drive, and when you start it back up, it refills memory to play exactly where you left off.

[WGAF]

lol i know, just wishing that they will be able to do that someday.

[Christopher]

Only important for SP games, most people tend to flip between a SP game and one or more MP games. I guess it's okay, but nothing really notable. Better than nothing?

I want more details on the UI (really love the current test UI, best this generation) and controller command integration. Also, I need more info on audio support (headsets).

[rainslacker]

It's not what I'd consider a must have feature, but certainly not against having it. I sometimes like to stop playing a game, then play some GT or DriveClub, so I can see it being useful for breaks.

[Christopher]

Yeah, I just hope people don't get confused in that MP games will not work with it since it won't maintain online connectivity, which means you'll start from the start menu every time on those.

In general, I'd much prefer if they allowed us to skip all the unnecessary company logo screens before we get to game menus. That would be a nice thing to see next generation, reduction of time wasters in general.

[rainslacker]

I'm sure they'll figure it out after a few times.:)

It's already annoying in games where they have online components, and you get disconnected when suspending. BL2 you had to back out to the main menu to reconnect. Death Stranding allows you to reconnect from the game menu though, which is good. I don't play MP games that much to really worry about it otherwise.

Skipping the boot up sequence is why I like the suspend feature so much to be honest. Square is especially bad about this. Plus, loading the game in some games can take a while, although since i installed an SSD that's been marginal for me.

[Parasidious]

Curious as to why you'd need more than one game running at the same time?

[masterfox]

So why exactly should we be hyped of this ?

[xX1NORM1Xx]

That’s a cool feature but it doesn’t really work on Xbox one because as soon as you go back in you realise you have been kicked or opening an app will send you back to the main menu...

The PS4 and Xbox one made a big fuss about how you could do this with one game and it never worked like they said it would so I’m not to excited about that feature.

[chiefJohn117]

It work sometime. It's 50/50 for me. Sometime you get kick other times it work as intended

[xX1NORM1Xx]

Yeah it’s a shame because it could have been a really cool feature, hopefully Sony and Microsoft get it right this time round I’d love to be able to switch between games and apps as easily as I can on my phone or tablet

[sampsonon]

another who cares moment.
remember watching tv while playing?

[chiefJohn117]

Not the same. This is a feature that will be used by every gamer.

[DarXyde]

I mean that's cool and all, but why? You can only play one game at a time.

Just seems really pointless, honestly. It reminds me of when Sony said PS3 can output HDMI colors that the human eye cannot perceive; like it's nice and all, but what's the point? These just sound like features for the sake of having them. Who is so unfocused that they're engaging and disengaging with their games at the drop of a hat? Both consoles are supposed to be very fast, so why do we need this feature beyond someone who is, say, playing a Souls game and switches to its sequels to beat all three in a semi- simultaneous manner? I'm thinking PS5 wil have a similar feature, but I really don't get the point.

My two cents on the matter.

[chiefJohn117]

So you don't have to wait on load times. Who doesn't play more than one game? Ofc it's not at the same time. When you finish with 1 and go back to another you often play it'll be ready where you left off. I often play 2 or 3 games in 1 day. (I don't game as much now a days so I gotta play multiple games a day to get my MP fix and finish SP campaigns) my last session was Halo 5, MK, RDR2 and back to Halo 5 all in 1 day. This feat would require no load up at all. Assuming all 3 games were suspended from my last time playing them. What's so hard to understand?

[DarXyde]

You may have missed the part where I said these machines are supposed to be really fast. Loading times seem like a strange case to make in light of these consoles.

I'll go on to say that I understand this all quite well. Did you understand where I said it seems really pointless? I get it, and it really just seems like a "look what I can do!" feature.

[shiva1]

I just want to see whats behind....what ports are available and how many for this design. Theres no usb in front. May be on the sides or behind...for being a tower they can have 4 usb ports... One hdmi, one power, 1 ethernet, 1 optical.....if they are making a dedicated external ssd then probably one properitary port for that too.

[BioShockGX]

That's cool and all but who actually suspends multiple games?
1 is all i need.

[chiefJohn117]

Anyone that plays more than 1 game? Lol just a well thought out guess

[HighPlayer28]

Now thats an amazing feature for next gen. Microsoft does not get their credit for the innovative features they have brought to gaming.

[terstomp]

For downloaded software titles that its doable - even now it could be doable.
But what about disc based games?

[ScootaKuH]

I might be in the minority but I don't see the point in this. I only play one game at a time. On all the consoles you can quit a game and jump into another quickly, so I just don't get it

[chiefJohn117]

Simply saves time when you decide to jump back into that other game. So you play 1 game on a regular (say it's a MP) and then you have a SP game you're progressing on. You go to boot up that SP it'll already be ready and waiting on you from your last session after you just finished up a few sessions of that MO game which was already sitting on its home screen when you turn the console on. It saves you the time of loading up. PS4 and XO does this for 1 game at a time this will simply do it for more than one. So if you return to that old game it'll be ready. It's perfect for someone like me that have gamepass and return to halo constantly while progressing on newly bought games. When I rage quit on Mortal Kombat and go back to Halo I don't have to wait on it loading up to the home menu

[BenRC01]

No one cares. All that does is make games crap out and force a hard reset. Show is a halo comparable to bungie efforts or anything actually playable.

[Firebird360]

Sounds like a cool feature. If I'm playing a sp game and my friends come online and wanna play a different game multi. Just suspend, go play with them then come back to where I was later.

[Dark-soul]

Finally i always wanted to play 10 games at once

[gangsta_red]

I remember asking for this feature for next gen consoles and getting ripped to shreds on this site asking "who plays multiple games at the same time?!?"

And here we are.

[Christopher]

It happening doesn't mean it's a priority or that most people will use it. Just means it's something they can do now with way more memory.

I don't agree with ripping on you for it, but it's honestly not that great of a feature. Nice to have for those it's important to, but not an item the majority will care about. I'm happy you are getting something you want, though.

I want more details on the share button on the controller. I really hate current methods for capturing and sharing on the console, would love just to hit or hold a button without having to pause the game in any way. Would have made this month's contest way easier.

[gangsta_red]

I think it will come in handy and even if it's not a high priority it's something that I would love to have all the same.

Just recently I played Greedfall, switched to Moonlighter for a bit and then wanted to go back to Greedfall. Wasn't a pain to have Greedfall load back up but would have been nice to instantaneously jump back in.

The share button is definitely needed and I'm glad they made room for it without redesigning the controller. It would have been nice for MS to come out with a controller with a share button earlier because yes, the current method is painful.

I personally hardly used it for Xbox and PS4. But these are things that should be in a console just for convenience sake.