Xbox Series X Smart Delivery Will Upgrade Your Games Along With Hardware

As part of a bundle of new details about the upcoming Xbox Series X, Microsoft has unveiled a brand-new feature called "Smart Delivery." The feature is designed to make sure that players are downloading the version of the game that corresponds to their Xbox in order to have the best possible experience.

Microsoft says that it's committed to using this feature on all its first-party games, including the upcoming Halo Infinite, which is also coming to Game Pass. This means that players will only have to purchase a given game once in order to play what Microsoft terms the "best available version" for the Xbox console they choose to play on--even if they upgrade to newer hardware later.

Smart Delivery will be available for all developers and publishers on the Xbox platform. The technology is intended for games that will release on Xbox One first and come to the upcoming Xbox Series X later.

It's unclear if publishers will have the option to decline to use Smart Delivery in lieu of selling two different copies of the same game for the Xbox One and Xbox Series X. CD Projekt Red has already announced that it will use Smart Delivery for their hotly-anticipated Cyberpunk 2077. We'll see if other publishers will follow suit.

The blog post included details on all sorts of new features that the upcoming platform will have, including ray-tracing and Quick Resume, as well as its specific hardware specs. It also confirmed more details about Xbox Series X backwards compatibility.