As we've moved into a more digital-driven world when it comes to delivering games to consoles, we're left with the always unpleasant wait for the download and install to complete.
Especially now we're in a world with the Xbox One X with its inflated file sizes thanks to enhanced assets, even with decent broadband you can't just jump in and play.
However, on the PS4, Sony has a neat way of allowing games to split their downloads, meaning you can play your preferred part of the game a little bit quicker. I think that's awesome and I'd love to see Xbox implement a similar feature.
How Xbox does it
When you hit download on something from the Microsoft Store, the whole thing begins the arduous transfer to your console as one giant package. DLC will be installed separately, but the main game, single and multiplayer will all arrive at once.
In some games, as the download reaches a specific point, you may get a "ready to start" message on the console. This means you can open up the game and in some cases start playing, though how much you have access too can vary wildly.
There is a better way ...
The Sony way
I first noticed this while downloading Call of Duty: WWII on my PS4. It's a fairly big file, though far from the largest, and the Store asked me which part of the game I wanted to download first: Single player or multiplayer?
The idea is that the download is then split into two distinct parts, with the bit you want to play first downloading first. Once finished, I could dive straight into multiplayer while waiting for the remainder, the single-player campaign, to download in the background.
In this case the multiplayer chunk was still larger, but it meant that on my not exactly stellar broadband I was able to start playing almost a full half hour sooner. That might not sound like a big deal, but it's half an hour of playing a new game. Not half an hour sat waiting for it to install.
Considering how big some of the games are on Xbox One X, I'd love to be able to split it up this way. The good news is, it looks like they're already working on something akin to this.
Chime in
Generally speaking, I prefer Xbox over PlayStation across the board. But this one little feature is something that stood out to me and I'd love Microsoft to implement the same.
If you're a multi-console person yourself and have a particular non-Xbox favorite feature you'd love to see brought over, share it with us in the comments below!
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