Available for everyone right now
In perfectly appropriate fashion, Xbox is implementing FastStart quickly following its E3 reveal. As part of the July update that’s rolling out to all Xbox One users today, FastStart makes its worldwide debut.
FastStart is a new game downloading technique that allows people to begin playing as quickly as possible. It identifies and prioritizes the files that are crucial to running the game, and it downloads those first. Meanwhile, anything that’s not essential for the early parts are downloaded in the background. Microsoft asserts that FastStart gets players into the game “twice as fast” as the current system allows.
This doesn’t represent the full, widespread implementation of FastStart, though. The July update supports 23 games (although this list will surely expand in the coming months). The current FastStart titles are:
- Arcade Game Series: Pac-Man
- Dead Space 2
- Destroy All Humans!
- Devil May Cry HD Collection
- Don Bradman Cricket 17
- Don’t Starve Together: Console Edition
- Fuzion Frenzy
- Game of Thrones — Episode 1: Iron from Ice
- Magic Duels
- Minecraft: Story Mode — Season Two — Episode 1
- Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm
- Neverwinter
- Pac-Man Championship Edition 2
- Rivals of Aether
- ScreamRide
- Sid Meier’s Pirates!
- Tales from the Borderlands — Episode 1: Zer0 Sum
- The Flame in the Flood
- The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season
- Toy Story 3
- Tropico 5 – Penultimate Edition
- Viva Pinata
- Ys Origin
FastStart isn’t the only trick up the July update’s sleeve. Other notable features are: The ability to group games and apps as an evolution of the Pins system; a system-wide search function from the dashboard by simply pressing the Y button; improvements to the “share controller” feature on Mixer; full-screen broadcasting on Mixer; and various improvements for console stability.
July Update Rolling Out Today [Xbox Wire]