Professional Halo competitor Brett “Naded” Leonard has identified a significant performance bottleneck affecting Xbox Series X|S consoles. His observations suggest that system responsiveness and multiplayer fluidity are directly impacted by the total number of friends and messages linked to a user’s account.
Leonard’s testing revealed a noticeable shift in performance after he purged more than 1,000 friends and emptied his message inbox, leading to a snappier interface and smoother gameplay. He detailed his findings, stating:
Input lag has dropped significantly, shot registration in Halo is much cleaner, and aiming feels far more responsive than before.
He suspects that background system processes struggle to constantly track the activity of massive social lists, which in turn siphons off hardware resources.
This isn’t the first time social features have hindered Xbox performance; a similar issue occurred on the Xbox One following a major OS update. To circumvent this, Leonard suggests using the “Follow” function instead of adding accounts as friends, as it is less taxing on the console. While Microsoft has not officially addressed the claim, the pro player insists that streamlining his account data even resolved specific technical hitches, such as game freezes during match re-entry.
Source: iXBT.games