We've been waiting a long time for Xbox to make improvements to game saves, and although the functionality seems to be staying mostly the same, they're adding new features to provide more clarity about how they work.
As part of the June 2025 Xbox update, it's mentioned that when you switch between two devices, you'll now get more details about the state of your save game and how it's syncing with the cloud.
There's a new progress bar, device names, timestamps, insights into the source of game syncs, error messages with helpful tips and more. All of this will apparently be displayed across console and Xbox Cloud Gaming.
"Today, we’re adding new features on cloud and Xbox consoles to help players when game saves are left behind on a previous device in an offline state. A new progress bar, device names, timestamps, and additional details are now displayed when you have previous game saves on another device in an unsynced state, giving players the information they need."
"We have also added insights into the source of game syncs, their progress, and error messages with helpful tips if syncing gets stuck. Players are now better informed about when to wait or take action, reducing the risk of accidental data loss during save dialogs."
Obviously the goal with this is to "reduce the risk of accidental data loss" as mentioned at the bottom of the paragraph, and it's specifically focused around Xbox's multi-platform strategy of playing games across multiple devices. If you're someone who plays across two devices or more, these improvements could end up proving particularly important.
We're hopeful it might help to prevent some of the console-only data loss situations we've seen before as well, although admittedly that doesn't seem to be the focus of the messaging here. For those who don't remember, games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Football Manager have suffered with issues in the past where save games have disappeared.
Looking ahead, the big request that many Xbox fans have is for a "manual sync" button, and some have also requested the ability to stop an auto sync in order to avoid overwriting a save file by mistake (which seems to be what happened with the Baldur's Gate 3 saga). Here's hoping they'll continue to make improvements over the coming months that specifically target data loss on consoles, but for now we're just pleased to see this long-awaited update.