The Xbox has had a tough couple of years, constantly losing market share to PlayStationNintendo Switch and maybe soon Steam Machine too. It's true that Microsoft's current hardware lineup leaves something to be desired, especially on the exclusivity front: there are virtually no modern Xbox-only games, as Microsoft releases its first-party games on PC, and has even begun to include landmark franchises such as Halo and Gears of War for PlayStation.
This lack of compelling exclusives, along with numerous PR debacles such as Activision-Blizzard allegations of wrongdoing, multiple closures of major studios, and mass layoffs, have eroded Xbox's reputation over time. While these are certainly valid reasons to ditch the Xbox brand in favor of a Switch or, more likely, a PS5, it would be disingenuous to argue that Xbox has nothing to hold over its competitors' heads. On the hardware front, the Xbox Series X remains an impressive and user-friendly piece of kit, with some great, practical features that are often overshadowed by the headline-grabbing exclusives from other platforms. But it's worth pointing out where the Xbox is ahead of the rest of the console market, if only in the hope that its strengths will be more widely adopted.
For all its strengths, the PS5 still lacks the Xbox's Quick Resume feature
Quick resume is the crown jewel of the Xbox Series consoles feature set
PlayStation has a lot of cool hardware-specific features, like reactive triggers and a gyroscope in the DualSense controller, but none of them compare to the usability and elegance of Xbox's Quick Resume. Introduced in the Series S and Series X devices, Quick Resume is exactly what it sounds like: a feature that lets users switch between multiple games on the fly. Users can even resume a game from exactly where they left off, after shutting down and restarting the console.
Almost all Xbox games are compatible with this feature, and Xbox itself has said that up to five modern games can go into the Quick Resume queue at a time, making it a boon for anyone who likes to jump between games at will. It works by saving the contents of the console's RAM to the hardware, essentially “freezing” a moment of game time. Then, thanks to the lightning-fast speeds of the Xbox Series SSD, that moment of game time can be quickly retrieved and booted up in an instant. It's a pretty valuable and convenient feature with a number of meaningful use cases, from games that involve a lot of downtime to consoles used by several different household members, playing different games.
Xbox's Quick Resume feature is convenient, but beware: errors have been known to occur, and it's not the same as saving a game the old-fashioned way.
Quick Resume is still the Xbox's biggest advantage over the PlayStation
Of course, few expected the powerless Nintendo Switch to offer anything like Quick Resume, but it's a little surprising that PlayStation hasn't tried to emulate the feature, given how similar it is to Xbox Series consoles on the hardware front. The PS5 had something similar in the form of Resume Activity, although this appears to have been removed from the console as of 2024. Even then, Resume Activity could only work for a single game at a time, leaving out the key benefit of Quick Resume.
Quick Resume is a bittersweet aspect of the Xbox Series console line. It's a great quality-of-life feature that really lends to the notion of Xbox being a shared hub for gaming and entertainment, but given the poor sales of current-gen Xbox models, it's also a feature that few have been able to enjoy. Hopefully, other platform holders will fold some form of Quick Resume into their hardware in the future.
