Professional Halo competitor Brett Leonard, widely known as Naded, has identified a significant performance bottleneck affecting Xbox Series X|S consoles. According to his research, a user’s system speed and multiplayer stability appear to be directly influenced by the sheer volume of friends and messages stored on their account.
Leonard’s experimentation showed that after purging more than 1,000 friends and clearing a congested inbox, both the system interface and actual gameplay became noticeably faster. The pro player noted:
Input lag has been reduced, shot registration in Halo is faster, and the aiming feels significantly more responsive.
He suggests that background system processes are likely siphoning off console resources to continuously monitor the status and activities of large friend lists.
This isn’t the first time the Xbox ecosystem has faced such issues; during the Xbox One era, excessive notifications and messages were known to cripple system responsiveness. Leonard advises players to use the “Follow” function instead of “Add Friend,” as it places less strain on the console’s hardware. While Microsoft has not officially addressed the claim, Leonard maintains that this digital cleanup even eliminated glitches that previously caused the console to hang when rejoining matches.
Source: iXBT.games