Quick Resume is a beloved Xbox Series X feature, but despite a lot of overlap between Xbox and PC, Microsoft still hasn’t been able to bring it to Windows.
However, it seems that gamers don’t need to give up on it just yet. A recent comment made by Roanne Sones, head of Xbox devices, gave us a glimmer of hope — but Quick Resume might be harder to achieve than it seems.
If you have to stop playing for a while and want to come back later, Quick Resume lets you get right back to it without going through any annoying menus and loading screens. Even with an SSD, modern AAA titles sometimes take a while to load, so getting to skip that and jump back in immediately is definitely nice.
Sones talked about the feature briefly during the launch of the Asus ROG Ally. Sones said: “How do we think about the idea of you start on your PC, and then you just want to take this with you and you want to pick up where you left off, and you want to be immediately ready to go.”
This type of thing is already available in other consoles, too, such as the Nintendo Switch, although that’s limited to a single device. For a Windows user, it’s currently mostly unattainable.
“Console has some of those capabilities with quick resume today,” Sones added. “How do we think about integrating this into the Windows platform?”
Sones went on to suggest that Microsoft is thinking of working with third-party developers and publishers, as well as its own teams, in order to bring this type of feature, including quick save and crossplay, to the PC.
Needless to say, the prospect is exciting. With devices such as the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally already out there, there’s a lot of potential for a Nintendo Switch-esque kind of experience for PC gamers too, but that’s probably far off. Until then, just Quick Resume would be fantastic — but is it likely to happen?
Based on what we learned just last year, making Quick Resume work on PC is much more of a herculean task than it might appear to be. Jason Ronald, the person behind the development of Xbox Series X/S hardware, told us that it took the team two-and-a-half years to make the feature run seamlessly on Xbox. Even then, it’s not flawless, and some games handle it better than others.
The Xbox Series X/S runs three operating systems simultaneously, and for Quick Resume to work, two of those systems are engaged; one of them is put into hibernation when you want to pause your game using this feature. This is why it’s not so easy to replicate on a single operating system with Windows 11. Moreover, Microsoft seems eager to do it right. That means that once Quick Resume arrives, it should work on multiple storefronts and across countless titles. It’s not just flipping a switch.
Still, the statement from Sones is good news for PC gamers. Even if Quick Resume is still far away, it does seem like Microsoft intends to bring it to Windows eventually — it’ll just have to overcome a lot of hurdles to get there.
