A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft announced that game captures on the Xbox Network would soon be deleted after 90 days, and it's now been confirmed that this will begin taking place as of January 2024.
Lots of Xbox owners have been receiving a message about this over the past few hours:
"Due to a new policy starting October 1st, 2023, existing and new captures on the Xbox Network will be automatically deleted after 90 days. The first deletions will start in January 2024. To back up your game captures before they’re gone, select Get Started below. To learn more about how to back up your game captures, select Learn More below."
Although this'll be a disappointment for some, the Xbox team has at least attempted to make the backup process easier than ever. By going to "My Games & Apps" followed by "Apps" and then "Captures", you can choose to back up multiple Game DVR clips and screenshots to OneDrive, or copy them directly to an external USB drive.
There's also the option to change the default capture location and set up future captures to always upload to OneDrive so you never lose them. Keep in mind that OneDrive does have a limit of how much you can upload for free though!
As for the external option, here's more information about copying your captures over to a USB drive:
- Plug a USB 3.0 (or faster) drive into your console.
- Press the Xbox button to open the guide.
- Go to My Games & Apps > Apps > Settings > Storage Devices.
- Go to your external drive and select Set as capture location.
- Your game clips and screenshots will be recorded to your external drive. To revert, set your internal drive as your capture location.
"Note that the USB drive that you use must be formatted as NTFS. You can’t use the same drive that your games are installed on, which is formatted differently."
Finally, don't forget that you can access your captures on the Xbox Network (before they're deleted) by using the official Xbox mobile app and downloading them to your device from there. That's another way to keep them permanently!
What are your thoughts about this decision? Let us know down in the comments section below.
[source support.xbox.com]
Comments 26
@Kaloudz I've always thought the same so I can't be too bummed even though I am but it's led me to think if they're thinking about having us charge for the cloud stuff the way they do on playstation.
I’m okay with this decision, but I’m not one to really take game captures. When I do, it’s usually on accident. I try to hit the pause button and end up saying oops. So they can start with deleting mine. I won’t mind.
I've captured all my clips on an external storage. Any clips on the cloud aren't important. So they can delete whatever.
Why are they doing this? I'm paying money for Xbox Gold to access online play and pay for server resources so let me save my game captures without having to pay extra for One Drive.
@PhileasFragg
OneDrive gives you 100 gb for free. If you are taking more than 100 gb of cloud storage captures fix your life
That's good because mine are mostly garbage anyways, except for one on red dead redemption 2 where a online player was glitched into the back of a horse's bum, it was very peculiar and a great sight to be told, it got me 1k+ views, if I could post it here i would 😆
@Kaloudz This is fantastic news. My biggest gripe about the new Xbox controller is that dumb capture button in the middle. I have clicked that so many times on accident and my kids click that button so many times that I am always going through my captured images and videos and deleting them because for me personally, it's a useless feature that I don't and will never use. I have remapped the button so many times already, but it keeps removing my remapping and going back to the original capture button so i will just have to deal with it.
Why not just have them save to the internal hard drive like Sony has had the PlayStation do since on board capturing started last gen? Why is Microsoft making something so simple so damn confusing?
@ZuneTattooGuy 100gb free? Umm is that an Xbox user thing. Because my free OneDrive account is like 5gigs.
there already on internal storage but then they also get uploaded to xbox network. so after 90 days they will still be on you console
@mousieone
My apologies the 100 gb thing I saw floating around for Microsoft Office Basic, it was a one month free trial and $20 a year afterwards which included 100 gb onedrive access. I already have Office 365 and get 5 tb of storage lol
Makes the "upload to the cloud automatically" feature entirely pointless for me. If it's not backing it up what's the point? I'd rather turn that off and save the bandwidth.
Thanks Cloud Gaming for taking up all the space and now I need to go through some ringameroe to back them up. Dumb.
I wish I could go on the Xbox app on my laptop and download images, rather than on the app on my phone. But it doesn't seem like that's possible.
@JokerBoy422 they do. This only affects uploaded content.
@ZuneTattooGuy It's definitely only like 5GB which is not enough, especially if you're using OneDrive for other stuff.
@Kaloudz You can repmap the button.
I have mine set as follows:
Press - Zoom
Double tap - Take screenshot
Long Press- Video clip
There are lots of options on what you can use it for, I find the zoom really handy personally.
@Moby yes however Xbox has always automatically deleted non uploaded captures as well after so long. Uploading it was the only way to keep it from doing that. Now however, even uploaded content is unsafe. Some of this could have been avoided if captures just stayed on the hard drive no matter what.
@Kaloudz Yes, it's exactly that.
It's actually an accessibility function called magnifier, I find it handy when you get the occasional tiny text in a game, and also often use it just to take a closer look at graphics too.
You activate magnifier (via the remapped button like me or by holding down the Xbox button and selecting magnifier) and then the triggers zoom in and out, it's really handy!
https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/account-profile/accessibility/use-magnifier
But I find it faster and more user friendly to remap, the choice is yours.
How to remap:
https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hardware-network/accessories/controller-share-button
@Kaloudz 🤣 Yep, it's allowed me to be glued to the sofa too. 🤣
It really is a great feature, I use it all the time, much more than I ever use screenshots and video clips, so it really works for me having it on the share button as a single press.
Poor indie company Microsoft must be struggling for cash and so won't be hosting our captures on the cloud anymore.
They're okay with increasing the cost of my Gamepass subscription though.
Just another example of the consumer getting f****d in the ass
@JokerBoy422 I am not sure what you're referring to but I still have game captures on my XSZx console from day one. If I go into the cloud I see stuff from years ago but I don't care or want those anyway so it's not going to bother me if they get deleted. But all of my captures seem to be present on my hard drive on my Xbox
Captures that were not uploaded to the cloud used to get automatically deleted after a few months. Maybe they got rid of that recently. Either way adopting a better capture app for saving and editing captures needs to exist. Xbox One launched with a better Capture app than the "Series" systems currently have now.
@Kaloudz Haha, it really is!
It was a thing on the Xbox One ages ago, pre Series consoles, so it's not new at all. With the advent of the controller with the share button (and it being remappable) it has become a lot easier though.
@Kaloudz 🤣 Happy to help.
Seeing as how I've been using the Xbox app to transfer my gaming clips to tiktok by infusing my own music with it, this news saddens me lol. I've been trying go avoid other methods of saving my gaming content and after two years we get this news 😅 follow me on TikTok and you tell me if I was onto something!
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