Can we revisit how slow Xbox One downloads are?
Game or app downloads are slow on Xbox One RECOMMENDED: Click here to repair Windows problems & optimize system performance Xbox One is incredibly popular gaming console but often runs into. With the release of the Xbox One X and 4K content, downloads. This means that no matter how fast my internet is, I have to download a lot of. Download speed may not have been your top concern with your Xbox 360 since the service initially only provided small downloadable content. Now that the Games Store offers full games on demand, it's time to kick off the shackles and get your console downloading faster.
I'm going to link to this post from earlier in the year, but now this issue is actually much bigger. With the release of the Xbox One X and 4K content, downloads have gotten much bigger, which means they're just taking a lot longer to obtain. For reference: The throttled download speed fluctuates between 20Mbps and 80Mbps, but mostly tends toward the former.
From the post above, it seems like Microsoft is intentionally throttling download speeds. I understand why, but why are other services not having the same issues? Why does Microsoft have to do this with Xbox, while Steam doesn't have to do it with a much larger playerbase?
Doing a speedtest in the Xbox Settings shows that the console is capable of utilizing a much faster connection (it's not hitting my internet cap, but the last one I did showed an 800Mbps download and 750Mbps upload)...but store downloads are still incredibly slow.
Before people start saying 'But you should be happy with 20Mbps...my internet is only 5Mbps!', I'm sorry that your internet is slow, but I pay for fast internet and can make use of it in most other places, so it's infuriating that the service that downloads the biggest files can't come anywhere close.
Try to download Halo 5 on an Xbox One X (105GB+) and you immediately realize why throttling internet is such a big deal. Downloading that at 20Mbps means 12 hours of downloading, while being able to actually utilize my internet speed would download it in 16 minutes...and that's only at 850Mbps (my connection is 1000/1000). This means that no matter how fast my internet is, I have to download a lot of things overnight because Microsoft can't handle it.
tl;dr: Microsoft throttles download speeds to a pretty low number, claiming it prevents other users from having connection issues...but other services seem to have no trouble hitting higher download speeds.
Depending on your data connection.
Microsoft has released a new system update for Xbox One, dramatically improving download speeds for games and apps.
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According to the update notes, you'll get up to 80 percent faster speeds for Xbox One downloads if your home broadband speed is greater than 100 Mbps. If your connection speed is less 100 Mbps, you'll apparently 'experience more consistent performance that is up to 40 percent faster than before.'
Microsoft notes that 'additional optimizations have also made background downloads more resilient to intermittent connectivity issues,' and that the update also includes stability and performance improvements.
Xbox 360 How To Download Games Faster
In other Xbox news, the head of Microsoft's gaming division has said that nearly half of all Xbox One owners use backwards compatibility. Backwards compatibility launched in November 2015 as part of a previous system update, the New Xbox One Experience. As of November 2016, people have spent more than 210 million hours playing Xbox 360 games on Xbox One, up from 145 million hours as of August 2016.
You can see all the Xbox One backwards compatibility games here.
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