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Microsoft is teasing new features supported by the Xbox Series X, including the ability to continue unsaved games even after restarting the console and switching games.
The juicy tidbit comes by way of a new podcast (via The Verge) hosted by Microsoft's Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb, where the Xbox Live boss spoke about the practicality of the next-gen feature. "I had to reboot because I had a system update, and then I went back to the game and went right back to it," said Hyrb. "So it survives a reboot - that's amazing."
It's a frustration familiar to the majority of gamers who've had to replay large sections of a game after mistakenly closing out the application before saving. It isn't clear what technology Microsoft employed to remedy the age-old dilemma, which Hyrb calls quick resume, but it's nonetheless a welcome update to modern games consoles.
Speaking with Hyrb in the podcast was Microsoft Director of Program Management Jason Ronald, who also dropped hints likely to excite Xbox fans, and audiophiles in particular.
"And now with the introduction of hardware-accelerated ray tracing with the Xbox Series X, we're actually able to enable a whole new set of scenarios, whether that's more realistic lighting, better reflections, we can even use it for things like spatial audio and have ray trace audio," revealed Ronald.
The news comes as the internet is still reeling from a recent bombshell by Xbox boss Phil Spencer that shed new light on just how capable the next-gen Xbox will be. We rounded up a list of the most exciting things we learned about the Xbox Series X, but a few highlights include backwards compatibility that goes back four generations and a 12-teraflop GPU (8 times the graphical power of the original Xbox One and 4 times the Xbox One X).
Of course, as Josh West so eloquently argues, the wit and might of next-gen consoles amounts to naught if the games suck. Fortunately, there are plenty of upcoming Xbox Series X games to be excited about.
