Xbox One Release Date News: Console To Support Partial-Download Play

Microsoft has revealed that the Xbox One will let gamers play digital games while they are installing. Microsoft said in a statement to engadget:

"Consumers will be able to sign on to any Xbox One console and have access to all their digital games. Once the required data - a fraction of the entire game - is on their hard drive, they can jump into the action while the rest of the game finishes downloading in the background."

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Microsoft previously noted that players could begin playing disc-based games during installation, though the company did not specify whether games downloaded from Xbox Live would share similar functionality.

Sony announced that the PlayStation 4 also supports partial-download play said a Sony engineer during the Develop conference last week saying:

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"Chunks [of a game] are automatically copied to the hard drive in the background...after the first few minutes your game can rely on having faster read speeds from the hard drive, which provides a better experience for players. And this is a completely background process for the player. They don't have to wait for anything to install before playing the game. The game will launch as soon as the disc has been put in the drive."

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Like the Xbox One console users will be able to pop a game disc in the console and start playing immediately while the system installs the game to the hard drive in the background.