Digital Foundry released a report a couple of days ago introducing a new method of game delivery for the Xbox One. Dubbed “Intelligent Delivery” this will be grateful news for those Xbox One owners who are still quite happy to run with the Xbox One S, even after the soon to be launch of the Xbox One X.

Two examples of games that are getting close to the 100 Gb mark in terms of space is Gears of War 4 and Forza Motorsport 7. Both of these games have dedicated 4K assets associated with them, hence the huge amount of disk space required.

So what is “Intelligent Delivery”? This effectively means that that Microsoft will detect what version of Xbox One you are running, whether it be the Xbox One S or the Xbox One X and then download the appropriate chunks of data required to power the game. So, for example, if you install Forza Motorsport 7 on a Xbox One S, via internal or external hard drive, it will install the main game and the 1080p assets (roughly 50 Gb), and not waste your internet bandwidth and precious hard drive space with the 4K texture pack.

Then if you ever upgrade to an Xbox One X, it will note this and start downloading the 4K textures for you. Other options for this will include various language packs as well. Only work with English or another language as your main language? The Xbox One will only download the appropriate language pack chunk.

Intelligent Delivery will initially be for Microsoft first party titles but the company is hoping third party developers will start adopting this approach as well. It is a welcome addition in light of the ever increasing size of large texture pack games.