Hate waiting to play your Xbox games because of a new update? Don't worry, you'll soon be able to pre-download them

Xbox will soon let you pre-download game updates before their scheduled release so you can make your life just that little bit easier.

Look, in this day and age, we all know game updates are a necessary thing, but that doesn't make them any less annoying. I'm not gonna do that whole thing of "remember when you could just pop a game in and it would just be ready to play, no installing, no downloading" but I do miss those days. However, I do appreciate when my life is made easier when it comes to those annoying fiddly bits. For example, Microsoft has announced that you'll soon be able to pre-download updates for games before they're meant to be out, a feature that'll surely be welcome for fans of online games in particular.

The feature is actually already available to Xbox Insider members, with the Xbox Update Preview released on the Alpha ring as of a few days ago. "Games that enable support for update pre-download will allow updates to be downloaded days before they are scheduled to release, so you can jump in and start playing right when the update goes live," reads a description for the feature. To be clear, that means this won't be the case for every game, so don't get mad at me when the main title in your rotation doesn't work with this feature.

Right out the gate, Sea of Thieves players will be able to enjoy this new feature, which is good news for those of you that hate having your pirate adventures interrupted by a pesky update. Xbox is actually a bit behind on this front, as this is a feature that PlayStation already utilises, but better late than never, as the saying goes.

While this is a look at Xbox's near future, its future in the distance is a bit unclear, so much so that there's even reports that some of the console's biggest games could make their way to PlayStation soon.