Xbox Series X will improve one of the best console features of this generation

At The Game Awards 2019, Microsoft unveiled the Xbox Series X, its next generation game console. The 2020 console’s new website unveils details about backward compatibility and the new controller. But head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, and partner director of program management for Team Xbox, Jason Ronald, sat down with GameSpot to reveal an upgrade to the Xbox One’s game suspension feature.

“Today, we have the capability of instantly resuming the last game that you were playing,” Ronald told GameSpot. “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.”

With the Xbox Series X, you’ll be able to suspend and resume multiple games at once — without listening to your jet engine of a console melt down in your entertainment center, with Spencer claiming the Series X runs very quielty. This means you won’t need to sit through a lengthy load when you resume Red Dead Redemption 2, even if you were just playing Destiny 2.

The suspended game feature is one of our favorites of this generation. When you shut off your console, the Xbox One places your game in a kind of limbo. The system isn’t on and running, but it remembers exactly what you just did and where your character was standing. But unlike auto-save — which consoles have had for multiple generations now — suspend removes the need for long waits to get back into the action.

With the Xbox Series X, players can theoretically have a rotating salvo of games ready to play at any time. If you’re waiting for a friend to log on for a Fortnite game, you can load up into a lobby and switch back to whatever single player game you’re jamming on. When it comes time to party up, swap back over without any time lost.

We won’t know how many games players can suspend — or if the feature works as well as we hope it does — until more information is released.