Microsoft has detailed its newest Alpha Skip-Ahead update for Xbox Insiders, and it contains a pretty neat new feature for game installations. The team is aiming to make installing games more flexible by allowing users to pick and choose what they want to install at the point of finding the game and hitting the download button.
This means that basically, games that support this feature should be a smaller initial download if you don't want to install multiplayer content or HD textures or something of that ilk. Here's how Microsoft describes the update:
"Game Installation - Choose what to install
We've added a new option that will appear before installing games with additional downloadable content or features. Choose what to install! Whether you want to save some space, reduce the time it takes to download, or you're just not interested in the content, this new option provides more control over your game installations before you even start."
Now, this isn't an entirely new feature - plenty of big AAA games these days let you delete parts of the game to suit your needs. However, not all of them allow you to do this at the beginning, with games often requiring a full download before then being able to chop and change which content remains installed. Hopefully, this will improve the process for some games and allow people to make those cuts before downloading.
At the time of writing, this update is only available to Alpha Skip-Ahead Xbox Insiders, but it will then come to other Insider rings and eventually all Xbox users in the coming weeks. If you want to see what else is available in the new update, check out the release notes via Xbox Support.