Do you have any particular issue with the cold boot-up start time of the Xbox Series X or S? As an owner of the latter, I can’t honestly say that I did, but it seems that Microsoft has decided, nonetheless to find a way to make the console start up a lot faster than it did before.
How did they do this? Well, in a nutshell, by reducing the boot logo animation time from 9 seconds to 4 seconds. No, there’s nothing particularly clever going on here. No optimisations. No hidden trick they missed before. That’s it. Overall, it seems like an incredibly simple thing to do, but one that will undoubtedly be well-received by the community if the animation length was the only thing causing boot times to be longer than was clearly necessary.
Following a report via the Verge, however, there is another key reason why Microsoft has done this, and again, it’s a move that is ultimately looking to help the consumer and particularly so during these difficult times!
Can confirm – worked with @harrisonhoffman and @jakerose27 to create a shorter boot up animation (~4s) from the original boot up animation (~9s), helping to reduce the overall startup time.
— Josh Munsee (@joshmunsee) July 23, 2022
Microsoft Improves Xbox Series X/S Boot Time – Energy Saving in Mind!
The new reduced boot-time animation was applied by a new update that rolled out for both the Xbox Series X and S last Friday. Now, admittedly, on the surface of things, this might just seem like a small but quantifiable improvement in the quality of life, right?… Well, actually, there’s a lot more going on here than meets the eye!
The key reason for this reduction in boot time is that the consoles are now set, by default, to go into ‘Energy Saver mode’ rather than ‘Standby mode’ when shutdown. While the former takes longer to start the console up again, it consumes notably less electricity than in the ‘Standby mode’ which means, on the whole, that your Xbox Series X and S should start costing you less to run when your energy bill arrives!
As such, by shortening the animation of the boot sequence, Microsoft is clearly looking to negate the longer long times required by this ‘Energy Saver mode’. – And if you’re lucky enough to not care in the slightest about your energy consumption (because this function can be changed in the settings), your console will start still up 5 seconds faster!
Overall, it’s a win-win, and, for what it’s worth, an amazingly savvy, and, dare I say, surprisingly considerate move on Microsoft’s part.
What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
