A few weeks back, I explained how Xbox One users can get up and running with a new Xbox One X as quickly as possible. Today, let’s look at another approach to moving to a new console: Network game and app transfer.

The problem here is obvious enough: You have many gigabytes of games and apps on your current Xbox One or Xbox One X console. And you’d like to get at least some of that content on a new Xbox One X console. More to the point, you’d like to do that as quickly as possible.

Anyone who has downloaded Xbox One games knows two things: These games are often humongous, and the download times can feel glacial, especially if you’re sitting there waiting to play. But with Xbox One X and its 4K assets, these downloads are even worse: I have at least two games, Halo 5: Guardians and Gears of War 4, that take up over 100 GB of disk space each.

That’s a lot of stuff to download. A lot of waiting.

But transferring games from one console to the other, even over a Wi-Fi network is much faster than downloading them from Xbox Live. (That said, using Ethernet would be much faster.) So if you already have one or more games installed on your current console, and would like to get them onto the Xbox One X as quickly as possible, this method can save a lot of time.

Here’s how it works.

First, on the original console, navigate to Settings > Network > Network transfer. Here, enable the option “Allow network transfer.”

Next, sign-in to the new Xbox One X and navigate to the same location: Settings > Network > Network transfer. You will see the other Xbox One listed under “Local consoles.”

Select that console.

In the “Transfer from” screen that appears, you can select any content from the source Xbox One individually. Or choose “Select all” to grab all of it. When you’re ready to transfer the selected content, choose “Copy selected.” You’ll be prompted to make sure you want to continue. (And if you have multiple drives, which drive you’d like to copy to.) Choose “Copy.”

The Queue view in Games & Apps appears so that you can view the progress of the transfer.

Voila. A faster way to get your already-installed games and apps on your new Xbox One X.

Tagged with Xbox One X