10 Mind-Blowing Gaming Features Everybody Takes For Granted

Before the dawn of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the concept of downloading games was nearly unthinkable. Gamers were totally used to slipping a disc into an optical drive and playing right away, and even pre-Steam PCs relied fairly heavily on physical media.

Today, things are different, and, while waiting for games to download used to be a major pain before broadband network speeds increased, it’s become even less of an annoyance as most AAA titles can be played in part while downloading.

This isn’t true of all games, of course—some claim to be playable while offering little more than access to the main menu—but others can boot up an entire story mode or an extra sub-mode before the download bar has crawled the entire way across the screen.

It’s an innovation which will hopefully be improved in the future, and it has alleviated many of the concerns associated with purchasing a game only to be barred from play by an obnoxiously-large patch or update.

Cloud streaming may one day make this feature obsolete, but, for now, it’s an excellent way to pass the time while waiting for a new piece of software to sort itself out.