Microsoft has offered further details about Smart Delivery, the system that automatically upgrades your Xbox One games to Xbox Series X versions if you play them on the next generation console.
Explained in an Xbox Wire news post, Smart Delivery will be available for all Xbox Game Studios games, and third party developers are able to take advantage of it should they wish. The system automatically takes care of recognising what console you are on, which data to install, and brings across your save games, too. So, for example, if you’ve been playing Gears 5 on Xbox One, if you buy an Xbox Series X and install Gears 5 on it, the system will automatically install the upgraded, optimised version of the game, and you can continue the campaign from where you last saved on your Xbox One.
Check out an exclusive interview with Xbox Series X developer Jason Ronald, below:
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Currently announced games that support Smart Delivery are Halo Infinite, Cyberpunk 2077, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Destiny 2, DiRT 5, Scarlet Nexus, Chorus, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, The Ascent, Call of the Sea, Gears 5, Second Extinction, and Metal: Hellslinger.
It should be noted that not all games will have Smart Delivery, and those that do won’t all have it from day one. For example, Cyberpunk 2077 releases in September, but CD Projekt Red will not have an upgraded Series X version of the game ready for the console’s release. However, when it does, the standard Xbox One version of the game installed on your Series X will be automatically updated with the enhancements. It’s basically all designed to be as hassle free as possible.
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Microsoft also points out that when a game upgrades, it doesn’t mean you lose the original version. You can have both versions as they are considered as just one game in the system. So for example, if you have both generations of consoles in separate rooms, you’ll simply select whatever game to download – say, Halo Infinite – and the system will download whichever version of the game is appropriate, rather than asking you if you want the original or Series X upgraded version.
Smart Delivery is notably different to backwards compatibility, in that it’s about making your old games better on the new console, rather than just supported. Xbox Series X will also continue to support backwards compatibility, meaning the console will have thousands of games available to play from launch.
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For more, see our look at how the pressure is all on Microsoft to reveal its first party games after the PS5 reveal, an insight from a developer on the differences between Xbox Series X and PS5, and further evidence that there is a second version of the next-gen Xbox called Lockhart.
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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer. You can follow him on Twitter.
Source: IGN.com Xbox Series X Smart Delivery Will Also Carry Your Save Data Across