Xbox One FastStart Is Now Available To Some Insiders

Microsoft made a ton of announcements during its E3 2018 press conference, but between all the game reveals and trailers, it talked about a few new features on the way to Xbox One. One of the most interesting things Microsoft announced is a new feature called FastStart, which essentially allows players to jump into games while they're still downloading. The feature is set to go live later this month, but before it does, Microsoft has launched a preview for some Xbox Insiders.

While the Xbox One has allowed players to launch games while they're still downloading for a while now, FastStart significantly changes the way things work. While the current "Ready to Start" system is put in place by developers, FastStart doesn't require any developer input. Instead, it uses machine learning to determine how people play a game, and then when that game is being downloaded, FastStart gives certain portions of it higher priority than others.

The result, at least according to Microsoft, is that Xbox One users will be able to start playing their downloaded games twice as quickly as they could with "Ready to Start" (on average). Microsoft said at E3 that FastStart will be launching at the end of June, and over the weekend, it rolled out the feature to Xbox One beta Insiders and a subset of users who are in the delta rings. A full list of games that support FastStart wasn't provided, but there are some in particular that Microsoft would like Insiders to target in their testing. The list can be seen below.

The Flame in the Flood

Fuzion Frenzy

Screamride

Spelunky

Casey Powell Lacrosse 16

Dovetail Games Euro Fishing

The Golf Club

If you're an Xbox Insider in the beta ring (or one of the lucky delta ring users to get invited to test this out), Microsoft asks that you download one of these games and provide some feedback on how FastStart performed. An associated quest and survey went live today, so you've got the tools you need to get to testing.

FastStart could be a big win for Microsoft, especially when it comes to Xbox Game Pass. Decreasing the amount of time players have to wait between initiating a download and jumping into a game could make Game Pass more attractive to Xbox One owners who are on the fence, but of course, there will also be benefits to players who have a large digital library and need to constantly delete and re-download games to manage space. We'll have more information on FastStart for you as we get closer to Xbox's June update, so stay tuned for that.