Microsoft is currently working on a new delivery system for digital (download) games on the Xbox One family of consoles that will open some free space on your hard drive for additional games and content. Known as Intelligent Delivery, it will take a new approach to downloading this content to your console, breaking the game up while picking and choosing what fits your requirements best instead of downloading the entire game in whole.
With this, it will decrease the amount of time it takes for users to download their favorite games onto their console, and open their drives up to future content. The idea is to only download what the user needs and nothing more. It’s a lot like Linux in ways, where you don’t have to install packages that you’ll never use. This is important as games make the mass push towards 4K thanks to the Xbox One X. These new games are going to be enormous in size. However, if you have a regular Xbox One (not the S or X), there is no point in all of that. So it may skip downloading the 4K assets and stick to only what you’ll be able to make use of on that console.
What if the game features the ability to offer multiple languages or has multiple cutscenes for each available language? If you have no interest in alternative languages, it can skip downloading any of that extra bloat, and only download everything for your native tongue. The same would apply if you bought a Blu-ray movie and ripped it to your network (into a digital file). If the movie came in 4 different languages and you chose to only include the one language you speak, you wind up saving all sorts of space.
By doing this, a game that typically would have taken up around 50GB of space, may only take up 35GB-40GB now. That releases 10-15GB of space for other games and content, and reduces the amount of time it takes to have to download the game.
Xbox One already makes use of a similar approach to downloading, by allowing you to play the game while it downloads. It will download a game just enough to allow you to make use of certain functions, while you wait for the other functions to download (ie, you may be able to play multiplayer while campaign is still downloading, or vice versa). Intelligent Delivery may simply be the next generation of that technology, taking things to that next level of experience.
Eventually this will roll out to the public in one of the software updates, granting your console this new feature. Although at the moment, Microsoft has given no sign to when this may happen. All we can do is sit back and wait at this point, but the idea in general is a fantastic move on their part.
