Xbox one - Save Games Tip

tort0429

Many of you who own an Xbox One probably already know this by now because you have encountered it yourself.  But for those who have not, I hope this tip saves you some anxiety.

I'm mostly a pc gamer, mmo's, single player rpg's, etc... but every now and then I play a game on the xbox one, as in this case, Witcher 3- Wild Hunt.  

The issue I came across apparently has nothing to do with this particular game as I'm told by Microsoft, it can happen with any game -- the dreaded corrupt save game file.

At any time while playing the game you have the option of saving the game 'manually' in addition to the autosave feature.  While playing the game, I decided to select the manual save and a message popped up that said 'can't save at this time'.  So I figured I was either in an area where I couldn't save or in a part of a quest that would not allow you to save.  So I continued to play, but I was wrong. 

What had happened was that my save game file became corrupt and after hours into the game, I was mortified.  Who wants to start a game over?  So I exited the game and sure enough it would not even start so even if I wanted to start over, I couldn't.  The game was dead.

So I call support.   In a nutshell, it was explained to me that there are two versions of your save game file.  One version is locally and one is on the cloud.  The cloud contains a backup of your save game file.  I'm not exactly sure how the corrupt file does not overwrite the cloud's backup file, but it doesn't.

To fix the problem, I was instructed to take the option under settings to Delete Local Save File Data.  Then start up the game again and it should sync with the cloud and restore your last good save game file.

I was nervous to delete the file but what choice did I have?  Interesting enough, after deleting the file and starting up the game a screen appeared with a scroll bar that showed 'syning saved game data'.   When done, the game started up again and I had only lost time since my last saved game.

A nice feature.  Again, many of you probably already know this but for those who don't, hope this tip helps.

Have Fun!