Microsoft describes Windows 11 as the best operating system for gamers. Because, Windows 11 also has some features to support this claim. Efforts are also underway to bring features such as automatic HDR and DirectStorage found on Xbox consoles to the Windows ecosystem. However, there is no work yet by Microsoft for the Quick Resume feature.
Quick Resume is not as simple as it seems
Quick Resume stands out as a feature on Xbox that allows you to suspend and switch between three games at the same time, sometimes even more. You might think that this kind of feature could be easily adapted to computers, but the situation is a little more complicated than that.
Jason Ronald, who leads the development of Xbox Series X/S hardware, states that the Quick Resume feature is not that simple. Stating that they worked for about two and a half years to develop this feature, Ronald emphasized that Quick Resume does not suspend a process just to access it later.
Ronald states that the Xbox Series X / S contains three operating systems at the same time. Accordingly, the system uses the highest unit for the UI and menu, the medium unit for the game itself, and the lowest unit for direct access to the hardware.
Medium and low speed operating systems work together for the Quick Resume feature. Saying that you can think of them as virtual machines, Ronald said, while the mid-level operating system puts the game in standby mode, the game is put into hibernation mode directly on the SSD through the lowest-level operating system.
This system is much more complex than suspending a process. There is such a mechanism behind the ability to return to Quick Resume games after unplugging, updating or leaving the Xbox Series X for weeks.
In order to use the Quick Resume feature on a computer, it is necessary to run the games through a virtual machine and save the final version to a hard drive. And making sure everything is running smoothly while all this is being done makes things a little more complicated.
Herein lies the reason why this feature is not offered on computers. The biggest hurdle for Quick Resume on computers is the wide range of hardware available. Ronald also draws attention to the diversity of software on computers and underlines that this situation creates many problems. Ronald used the following statements on the subject:
Computers have a more complex software environment. Many PC gamers customize their hardware, special drivers specific to different graphics cards and various mods on top of that. The computer is certainly much more complex.
Since Xbox doesn’t just offer development and customization for the game, it seems like a much more suitable environment for Microsoft to offer such features. So what do you think about this subject? You can share your views with us in the comments section.