Microsoft also announced a new Xbox Series X feature, Smart Delivery, that sounds like a user-friendly way of supporting cross-generation Xbox One/Series X games. Smart Delivery “empowers you to buy a game once and know that — whether you are playing it on Xbox One or Xbox Series X — you are getting the right version of that game on whatever Xbox you’re playing on,” said Microsoft.
The point of Smart Delivery is that users can “purchase a title once in order to play the best available version for whichever Xbox console they choose to play on.” In other words, if you buy Halo Infinite — which is coming to both the current- and next-gen consoles — the Xbox One in your bedroom will download the Xbox One version, while the Xbox Series X in your living room will download the Xbox Series X version. And of course, this also means that cross-generation first-party games will be cross-buy: You can buy a game once and play it on either console, and if you already own it on Xbox One, you’ll get the Xbox Series X version at no additional cost.
Smart Delivery will apply for all first-party games, and third-party developers and publishers can “choose to use [Smart Delivery] for titles that will be [released] on Xbox One first and come to the Xbox Series X later.”