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Microsoft XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

Xbox Series X To Allow 'Suspend and Resume' For Multiple Games At Once (wccftech.com) 53

In an exclusive interview with Gamespot, Partner Director of Program Management for Team Xbox Jason Ronald revealed a new feature of the Xbox Series X: the ability to suspend and resume multiple games at once. Wccftech highlights what Ronald said: [From Gamespot]: "Today, we have the capability of instantly resuming the last game that you were playing. Why can't you do that for multiple games? Many players choose to play multiple games at the same time, being able to instantly jump right back where I was, those are things that we can do with the platform level to make the gaming experience better. It's really about ensuring there's less waiting and more time playing because that's ultimately what we all want to do with the consoles and with the services that we have."

For his part, Phil Spencer (Head of Gaming at Microsoft) wanted to highlight the goal to enhance the player's immersive factor thanks to the high refresh rate (the Xbox Series X supports up to 120 frames per second) and reduced input latency: "So when we talk about things like refresh rate and we talk about input latency, this is all about the most immersive experience game designers can create, where the visuals are stunning, my ability to get into the experience [is] very timely, it's as great as it's ever been with the I/O speeds and the load times we're going to see, and the input and the ability for just my control and activation of my character or of the game itself becomes a subconscious thing and not something that I think about."

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Xbox Series X To Allow 'Suspend and Resume' For Multiple Games At Once

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  • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Saturday December 14, 2019 @05:24AM (#59518348)

    (Or was it the other way around? ;)

    Anyone remember?
    Before console-first.
    Before pointlessly online games.
    Before loot boxes.
    Before addictive-by-design game "crack".

    Wow... You can save games! MULTIPLE ones!
    Is that like when your big advertised feature for Windows 10 was, literally-actually-on-billboards-for-real, that you brought *back* the start menu that you ruined in Windows 8?

    Well, I guess remakeism had to come to software and hardware too some day...

    I wonder when all of western society will completely stall in an ever-tightening loop of repetitivity, until "intellectual property" has eradicated all of inventive and creative behavior for all eternity.

    • They are talking about different games, not different save states in the same game.

    • I remember when there were no video games. You had to physically touch things like dice, cards, game pieces. I know I know, it was a dirty, exhausting time to be alive.
    • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday December 14, 2019 @10:35AM (#59518660)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I don't think this dumbass is barefoot by choice

    • Anyone remember?
      Before console-first.

      I remember before 1991, when one couldn't expect even smooth 60 fps scrolling of a 2D plane on an IBM PC. Something like the first Sonic the Hedgehog for Genesis would have been unplayably choppy on the PCs of the time, as they relied on a dumb frame buffer, not one or two layers of colored text with sprites over them. It took Commander Keen to get anywhere close to workable scrolling.

      • Yep. It was a time where processing power was so scarce that specialized hardware made a big difference. The consoles of the era had hardware support for scrolling, spirtes, collissions, etc.
        Of course, a few years later pcs would be more powerful than contemporary consoles and it's true that some console-to-pc ports (or games designed with consoles in mind) had limitations that wouldn't been there if they were pc exclusives.
        • Even so, for a couple decades (1987 to 2007), consoles had a huge advantage over PCs in that consoles could output to a large monitor by default. At that time, large monitors for the home market were low-resolution living room TVs, and high-resolution monitors for the home market were small and made for a single viewer at a computer desk to read and edit large quantities of text. It was difficult to physically fit even two adult bodies around a 14" VIS monitor, let alone four. There were video cards and sca

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by diems ( 6396892 )

      It's a nice feature in theory but watch as dickhead game designers disable this feature in their games citing that its 'cheating' and takes away their 'creative control'.

      The same dickhead designers who use savepoints on purpose instead of savestates to force you to go back more and redo more shit. savepoints = saving at predetermined locations only. savestates = save anywhere. Theres no reason why any game on a modern console shouldnt have savestates yet here we are without them in many games because of dic

  • I'm still waiting to see this Xbox next to a TV so I can understand where they are expecting you'll place that odd shaped design.
    • Yeah, this forces the box out of the cabinet and onto the counter. I know they want their stuff to be seen but I donâ(TM)t. Well I personally donâ(TM)t care but my wife sure wonâ(TM)t be happy.

      • supposedly it can be used upright or on its side so will still fit just fine in a cabinet.
      • It's time for some out-of-the-box thinking.

      • by diems ( 6396892 )

        youre probably right. They named the xbox one x a really long name to force people into calling it "the one x" which was the original name microsoft wanted people to call the xbox one (the one instead of xbone). they like to do tricky stuff like that. They gave the xbox classic a non flat top for no other reason than to stop people from stacking stuff on top of it so it was always at the top of a pile and not covered.

    • It's just like a smaller less deep shape similar to that of what my AV receiver is. You'll be able to fit it on any TV stand with a shelf.
    • I'm even more curious about heat dissipation. As consoles have more and more PC like parts in them, heat is beginning to rear it's ugly head as a potential issue. I know the set top box for my IPtv gets quite hot, and is not going to last long when it's not out in the open, where it can breathe. Today's electronics with 4K capability are reaching the limits of what passive cooling can provide. I'm not too sure they can do that kind of performance with just a heat sink, and still call it something that c
      • Consoles have fans for generations now. Even the original Wii had a fan. This new Xbox also has a vertical orientation with a vent in the top, like a square trashcan mac pro.

    • Form is a turnoff. I want to sit it in my ventilated cabinet, safe from my kid's hands and their sticky PB&J hands. They'll be putting crayons down the vents for sure.

  • This is just something they are forcing on the game developers, to meet their licensing and certification on that platform. They probably provide an API in which to store game state information that makes it a little easier and gives the user some degree of control. However I can guarantee this isn't some "automagic" thing where the system handles this transparently. If that was the case they could have added it to XBox One with a system update (which would require imaging not just RAM, but all GPU RAM a

    • This is just something they are forcing on the game developers, to meet their licensing and certification on that platform.

      Yes because they don't want to have a half-assed feature that doesn't always work because devs decided they didn't want to implement it.

      They probably provide an API in which to store game state information that makes it a little easier and gives the user some degree of control. However I can guarantee this isn't some "automagic" thing where the system handles this transparently.

      It's just like what we have today on modern consoles where you can jump back into the system menus with the game suspended and then go back and resume the game, only now you can do it with multiple games. It's right there in the (quite short) article:

      " Today, we have the capability of instantly resuming the last game that you were playing. Why can't you do that for multiple

  • from the disastrous Xbox One launch and will a) go easy on the evil business practices (I said "easy", this is Microsoft we're talking about here) and b) actually have, you know, some games available at the console's launch.

    I mean, when I was a kid the NES launched with Mario, the Genesis had Altered Beast (not counting Japan's kind of crummy launch of Thunderblade/Space Harrier II), The PlayStation had Toshinden & Ridge Racer, the Saturn had Panzer Dragoon & Virtua Fighter, hell even the 32x ha
  • PCs been able to run multiple games at once for decades. He is bullshitting cause nothing happens instantly.
    • by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      When was the last time you ran multiple games at the same time on your PC and then alt-tabbed between them? People usually don't do that, and that's not what this is.

      This is about suspend-to-disk. Imagine you have a vmware setup where the host computer only has enough resources to run one child VM at a time, and you need to switch between them. You're going to suspend a VM and resume a different one, do some work, suspend that one, resume a different one.

      This is about being able to switch between multiple g

  • Big deal, introducing save states. The reason for limited saves, or save points etc. was due to space restrictions and the difference in speed between volatile and non-volatile memory (ie. saving RAM to a removable card) since this gap has narrowed I see no reason this can't be easily implemented at an OS level, no changes to the game required. However I would like to point out that some games rely on the mechanism of their save points and limited saves, annoying as it can be trying to find a save point w

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