Xbox One has play as you download functionality similar to PlayStation 4


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Sony's PlayStation 4 isn't the only next-gen console that claims to offer near-instant access to digital games -- Microsoft's Xbox One apparently does as well, according to a statement issue by Redmond to Engadget today. "Consumers will be able to sign on to any Xbox One console and have access to all their digital games. Once the required data -? a fraction of the entire game -? is on their hard drive, they can jump into the action while the rest of the game finishes downloading in the background," the statement reads. It also notes that you can already enjoy much of that proposed functionality on the Xbox 360, though it requires significantly more effort than we're hoping will be required on the Xbox One.


 


The Xbox One supports similar functionality with disc-based games, allowing you to immediately jump in and play while the game is installed to the HDD. Of course, you'll still need the disc in the drive for it to play; at least that's the case now, afterMicrosoft walked back its Xbox One DRM strategy. Microsoft also teased today's news in its original Xbox One announcement PR: "Unleashing the virtually unlimited power of the cloud makes everything more convenient and accessible, from allowing games to be installed in segments so that gameplay can start quickly to updates downloading in the background."


 


We've yet to see Sony or Microsoft's play while you download functionality in action on their respective next-gen game consoles, but we've got a smattering of major press events sprinkled across the next several months leading up to this holiday when the consoles launch. But hey, we understand your suspicion -- if we don't get a chance to see it in action soon, then we'll start to worry.


 


http://www.engadget.com/2013/07/16/xbox-one-play-as-you-download/


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The weird thing is, this isn't new info. I'm pretty sure MS mentioned this around the time of their first event.

 

Either way, this is part of the future of digital purchases. MS already does this with software like Office.

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I think as games get larger this was something that just had to be on offer.

 

 

Does the X1 have secondary chips to handle background tasks like PS4? If not it might make the X1 take a performance hit when downloading as you play. IDK.

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Is this similar to Load and Play? Halo 2 for PC has this. You put the disc in and bam you can play it the next minute while it is still installing.

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Let's hope that with features like this that microsoft manages to serve up the bandwidth at a decent pace this time around.

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lol @ the person who voted this topic 1 star. :rolleyes:

Not sure why anyone cares about thread ratings....

This would've been actual news if they weren't planning on offering this feature. That being said, its amusing that people continually liken it to the PS4 when Microsoft has been offering this for other games and software for quite some time.

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Not sure why anyone cares about thread ratings....

 

 

I don't. I just noticed someone went to the trouble of essentially down voting a topic about play as you download on X1.

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Well at least there's something good about the Xbox One, although this news still hasn't convinced me to get an X1.  I'm still sticking with the PS4.

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@Mikeffer, yep - I'm pretty sure it has been known since day 1. It's been mentioned at lot previously, but a lot of Xbox One policies seem to be being repeated recently :P

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It seems like both consoles reserve some CPU cores for their own purposes, but I was previously under the impression they had an ARM chip alongside their x86 one handling the low level tasks.

 

I guess I don't think that's true anymore...but I don't know for sure.

 

Either way no current machine above tablet/netbook spec should really have a problem downloading and playing at the same time.

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This was mentioned at the first showing of XB1 or there E3 showing. Everyone was raging though, so they forgot the good points :laugh:

 

I doubt it uses an extra chip. I don't know why it would need an extra chip. Essentially you're copying files from the Internet to a hard drive. The only time you'll ever notice it is if the game loads and doesn't have the files needed. You may have to wait. Just like buffering on youtube :laugh:

 

How many games will actually support this? I can only see it working for games similar to Killzone. Where you download the multiplayer and single player separately. Maybe on games as well which have level loads.

 

Plus people pick up on this as if it is a big thing but a lot of people didn't want an always on console. This sort of functionality is aiming for the always on console user.

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Xbox One has a play as your download feature similar to Playstation 4 has a play as your download feature similar to Office 2010 has a play as your download feature similar to Halo 2 has a play as your download feature similar to Blizzard games have a play as your download feature similar to a Microsoft patent.

 

Welcome to streaming installs from last decade now please wake up.

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Everyone said this had been mentioned from day one but I don't remember it. I guess any positive aspects about the X1 were obscured by the idiotic ones.

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Near instant access?

 

Does anybody know how long you will have to wait before you start playing?

 

Some MMOs do this.  Take WoW for example.  You can play while it downloads, but you need to download I think 5 GB first for the "core" game.  

 

So can you start playing when you have only 1MB downloaded?

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Near instant access?

 

Does anybody know how long you will have to wait before you start playing?

 

Some MMOs do this.  Take WoW for example.  You can play while it downloads, but you need to download I think 5 GB first for the "core" game.  

 

So can you start playing when you have only 1MB downloaded?

 

 

I imagine it would be relative to the size of the actual game.

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Everyone said this had been mentioned from day one but I don't remember it. I guess any positive aspects about the X1 were obscured by the idiotic ones.

I made this thread on June 13th of this year. https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1158658-xbox-one-features-that-interest-you/

If I had to guess, this was officially announced at the TV TV TV event and was rumored for a long time.

 

Going by the results so far, at least 25 people here want the feature and 45 regulars know about it.

And going by your vote (or lack of it for this feature) - you probably don't remember it because it doesn't interest you? :p

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It depends on the size ofc, and also the compression, it could be using a good deal of compression and then installing so instead of d/ling 5GB or something you could be d/ling 1GB compressed which cuts down the time even more.

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I made this thread on June 13th of this year. https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1158658-xbox-one-features-that-interest-you/

If I had to guess, this was officially announced at the TV TV TV event and was rumored for a long time.

 

Going by the results so far, at least 25 people here want the feature and 45 regulars know about it.

And going by your vote (or lack of it for this feature) - you probably don't remember it because it doesn't interest you? :p

 

 

I'm glad both systems have this feature. I clearly remember Sony talking about it, I didn't know Xbox had it until I read this article. Apparently, a lot of people on the net didn't remember because this point because this story has been picked up by a lot of tech sites.

 

As you pointed out, some of these features might have been drowned out by the TV TV TV TV TV nonsense. :p

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Some in this thread seem to be assuming X1 digital games are formatted the same as they are on 360, or a typical PC DVD.  Im not a game programmer, but I do program, and just the thought that this feature would require more than a minute with a "good" connection (+1.5Mbps) is strange.  To me it seems only natural to break the resources apart for DL, or even stream the resources if they arent completed yet.  I havent seen any SDK docs either, which makes me wonder: "How do we know the call for a texture in the cloud is not the same method call for a texture on disc?".  MS is pretty good at making high level interfaces to interact with low level tasks.  I could see an API where a simple resource call is made with only a flag being set to tell the system where the resource is located. To the developer, its all behind the scenes stuff.

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Early on when they said, flat out, that you'll be able to start playing as the game installs the first time you put it in I naturally thought that that would also cover games you're downloading, since they're doing the same process, grabbing data off of something and installing it to the hdd.  You might have to wait a tad bit more if it's a digital download compared to a disc install but that'll be minor I bet.

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Some in this thread seem to be assuming X1 digital games are formatted the same as they are on 360, or a typical PC DVD.  Im not a game programmer, but I do program, and just the thought that this feature would require more than a minute with a "good" connection (+1.5Mbps) is strange.  To me it seems only natural to break the resources apart for DL, or even stream the resources if they arent completed yet.  I havent seen any SDK docs either, which makes me wonder: "How do we know the call for a texture in the cloud is not the same method call for a texture on disc?".  MS is pretty good at making high level interfaces to interact with low level tasks.  I could see an API where a simple resource call is made with only a flag being set to tell the system where the resource is located. To the developer, its all behind the scenes stuff.

I'm guessing they've got artifacts split from the engine of the game. With that in mind, you can download the raw code of the game with not much data and then download/stream the models/textures etc as the game needs them.

 

That makes logical sense, awesome in practise.

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