If you tried to download a game on Xbox One today and it felt faster for some reason, it wasn’t just your imagination – Microsoft covertly updated the console to make download speeds up to 80% faster for some users.
The news, which didn’t make it to main Microsoft news sites like the Xbox Wire or Major Nelson’s blog, comes by way of some obscure patch notes on Microsoft’s Xbox support website.
The update is titled 10.0.14393.2152 (rs1_xbox_rel_1610 161208-1218) fre – catchy, I know – and besides improving general stability of the system, it will dramatically reduce the amount of time you spend waiting for a game to download.
The largest improvement will come to users with high-speed connections, which Microsoft’s support site defines as greater than 100Mbps. For them, they can expect apps and games to download about 80% faster than before.
But if you’re not rocking fiber yet, don’t worry, you’re still getting a performance boost too.
Anyone with a connection that’s less than 100Mbps should experience more consistent performance that is up to 40% faster than before – which could mean the difference of a few hours when downloading full titles like Gears of War 4 or Forza Horizon 3.
While we all love flashy UI improvements slow download speeds have plagued the system since launch day, so it’s nice to see some work done in this area.
Now if only we could make some sort of plastic cartridge that had games completely installed on them and didn’t need any sort of day one patch…
- Check out our guide to the best Xbox One games
