With the release of the Xbox Series X just a little over a month away, many are eagerly awaiting the chance to experience the console firsthand. Much of the relevant information gaming enthusiasts need to know about the Xbox Series X is currently available to the public. However, there are some features included on both the Series X and Series S that some consumers may not be aware of.
By now, consumers interested in the Series X and S have already found out information like the price of the consoles, the technical specifications, and many other features that may influence purchasing decisions. However, one especially useful feature regarding storage management has just been revealed.
During a recent episode of the Xbox Podcast, Jason Ronald, Xbox director of program management, detailed a storage management feature that allows users to delete certain parts of the game to free up storage space. This will certainly be useful, considering how much bigger games have become in terms of file size and data space. Though, Ronald also mentioned that there are some limitations in terms of this feature.
It will ultimately depend on the developer or publisher of the game in question, but at least in certain scenarios,  players can delete certain segments of a game, such as the campaign mode, multiplayer mode, or DLC to free up storage for additional games. Again, it will ultimately come down to how the developers decide to segment their game modes, whether that's separately or together in one big file size. So, for example, games like Call of Duty that place emphasis on both multiplayer and single-player campaigns could allow players to download only the parts of the game that they are particularly interested in. Modern Warfare had this option, but in a roundabout way.
This feature will definitely come in handy for many players considering, again, how big game file sizes have started to become. Even with one terabyte of storage space, that can be eaten up fairly quickly if each game is 50 to 100+ gigabytes. Though, it seems that Xbox has started to take precautions in order to avoid this problem.
In addition to this new feature and 1 TB of storage space, Microsoft has started to develop new ways to work around this problem. For example, the Xbox Series S will have reduced game file sizes by 30%. It will be interesting to see what else Microsoft will do to address the increase in game file sizes.
The Xbox Series X is set to launch on November 12th, 2020.