With most games being purchased digitally thanks to the pandemic, download speeds are more important than ever. And also because of the pandemic, some of us have gotten through our entire game libraries and we’re getting to the end of Yakuza: Like A Dragon, so we’re desperate for the next game to come as soon as possible.
Xbox feels our pain, and so they’ve rolled out a new feature for Xbox Insiders.
“Suspend in the queue” suspends your current game and lets your Xbox focus entirely on downloading as fast as possible. This is a new feature rolling out on current and next-gen Xboxes, according to engineering head Eden Marie, but just for Xbox Insiders (which is sort of like Xbox’s beta testers).
While faster download speeds are good, knowing what games are coming to Game Pass is even better. That’s another new feature rolling out to Xbox Insiders, with banners revealing new games coming to Xbox Game Pass and what games might soon be leaving Microsoft’s game subscription service.
In other news, Microsoft just announced today that they'll be rolling out Auto HDR for Windows PC starting today, but this will only for Windows Insiders. That's like being an Xbox Insider, but for Windows.
Auto HDR was originally a feature reserved for the Xbox Series X/S. It brings full HDR color and brightness benefits to old SDR games on DirectX 11 and 12 thanks to AI-powered technology that determines what parts of older titles would look better with a bit of a boost.
Of course, this only works if your TV/monitor has HDR as a feature, but from what we’ve seen on the Xbox Series X, Auto HDR can be a huge benefit for older games.
Head to the Windows Insider website to sign up and download the latest version of Windows that includes Auto HDR. Details for getting it to work (or turning it off if you don’t like it) are on the latest dev blog update.