If you own an Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S console, you’ve most likely witnessed the benefits of the Quick Resume feature. If you’re out of the loop, though, Quick Resume essentially allows the player to switch between multiple games on the console without closing them down. This lets you pick up a game you previously suspended exactly where you left off, without requiring a time-consuming relaunch.
While a brilliantly convenient way to suspend and resume your games, Quick Resume isn’t without its flaws, and I’ve encountered more than a few situations where the feature didn’t work at all.
This is occasionally the case with games that are new to Xbox Series X or the Xbox Game Pass subscription service, such as Hades or Boyfriend Dungeon, with which I’ve personally experienced a lack of Quick Resume functionality.
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Now though, thanks to Xbox director of project management, Jason Ronald, we have a much better idea as to why Quick Resume isn’t always as seamless as we’d like it to be.
Replying to a fan’s question on Twitter about why Quick Resume doesn’t always work out of the box, Ronald said: "The team has been putting a lot of effort into hardening Quick Resume and we put some titles through extra validation to make sure the experience is as intended before enabling it. Feeling good about the progress and you shouldn’t see a delay for new titles soon."
Analysis: why Quick Resume matters
Suspend and resume features have been a standard on consoles for a few generations now, with early examples including the PS3’s Home button (which suspended a game, but kept it open in the background) and even the Nintendo DS’s sleep mode. Quick Resume feels like an evolution of suspend and resume, and it’s far more robust in that it allows players to suspend and switch between multiple titles.
Much like backwards compatibility with older Xbox generations, and Xbox Cloud Gaming, Quick Resume is yet another feature the company has gone the extra mile in implementing. And Quick Resume is especially useful if, say, you’re tired from work and just want to dive into a game without sitting through initial load times or those unskippable developer splash screens.
While Quick Resume does work as intended for the most part, it can be a tad frustrating to have come to rely on the feature, only to find out the game you’re playing doesn’t support it just yet. This can lead to loss of progress if you haven’t saved in a while. But at least the Xbox Series X/S’s lightning-quick SSD can get games up and running again in a short amount of time.
I’ve often been delighted by how well Quick Resume works overall, though, in places where it’s implemented. I sometimes even forget the feature exists, only to be surprised when I load up Forza Horizon 4 and find that I’m already in-game, bypassing that game’s lengthy initial load times.
There’s room for improvement with Quick Resume, then, but it sounds like Xbox is at least working to have the feature ready for all games at launch. This will help to relieve the uncertainty from players like me who rely on Quick Resume often to get back into the action as quickly as possible.
