Improving Xbox One install times are ‘high on priority list’

Xbox boss Phil Spencer admits that the reasons behind Xbox One’s lengthy installation times remain a little unclear, although he’s determined to address them.

Spencer told IGN, as reported by GameSpot, that while the Xbox One in some instances installs games faster than PS4, for many titles the installation times are significantly worse”.

Some of the blame, he said, lies in the fact that Xbox One was originally designed to have a permanent internet connection, although this was famously dropped pre-release.

"The change to having to deal with an offline-only state meant that all the install code-flows weren’t as perfect as they could be," Spencer claimed. "Are there systematic reasons for that? Our drive’s obviously the same speed, moving stuff into memory takes the same amount of time; hard drive speed’s basically the same, so what’s going on?

"I’m not defending it at all, because I do think install times should be faster. I’m capturing the data. I want to be state-of-the-art in install times so people can start playing games as soon as possible.

"It’s one of the things that’s on top of my list in terms of the parity experience between us and Sony, and making sure that the install times aren’t deficient on Xbox in any way."