Here’s some good news for Xbox One S owners: You won’t be saddled with massive, 4K-compatible game downloads when the Xbox One X ships. Instead, Microsoft will make different versions of game downloads available for the Xbox One X and non-4K consoles.

“With the launch of Xbox One X, when it comes to game content our intention is to download the correct assets to the correct console,” a Microsoft statement to game fanboy site Stevivor explains. “This means, regardless of the TV you are playing on, 4K assets will be downloaded to Xbox One X (if available) and the standard 1080p assets will be downloaded to an Xbox One S.”

This is important.

4K assets will be significantly bigger than the normal 1080p assets, resulting in massively bigger and slower downloads. And those assets would otherwise take up far more space than is warranted on our already-stuffed Xbox One and Xbox One S hard drives.

And these assets aren’t just graphical, Microsoft notes.

“As part our developer readiness for Xbox One X, we have made available a feature which will give them significant flexibility when it comes to what gets installed on a user’s console,” the statement continues. “In addition to 4K-specific assets, developers have options when it comes to language specific assets as well, which depending on the title, can drastically reduce the install footprint. This ability to intelligently install the best assets for each console and language are available on all Xbox One devices, and it will be up to the developer of the game to determine the specific implementation.”

That is fantastic news.

Thanks to OnMSFT for the heads-up.

Tagged with Xbox One X