Xbox users are reporting that deleting messages and removing friends boosts in-game network performance across Xbox One, Xbox Series, and PC.
Twitter/X user Naded has renewed debate on how account-level data may impact multiplayer performance across Xbox One, Xbox Series consoles, and even PC. According to them, clearing out old messages and trimming down friends lists has led to noticeably smoother gameplay, faster input registration, and improved overall network responsiveness in competitive online titles.
The Twitter/X user shared a detailed account of his experience, claiming that his Xbox account had been affected by what he described as a systemic issue for more than seven years. According to him, having large amounts of stored account data, including hundreds of friends and years of messages, appeared to interfere with how inputs were processed and synchronized with game servers.
Naded suspects the issue may date back to late 2015, following the launch of the Xbox One’s “NXOE” dashboard update, which coincided with the release of Halo 5. He noted that during the game’s beta and early weeks, aiming felt significantly more responsive, but later degraded as accounts accumulated more data over time. After purging messages and reducing his friends list, he claims the difference was immediately noticeable, with inputs no longer being dropped or delayed.
The Twitter/X user further noted that that this is not limited to Xbox consoles. He reported identical improvements on PC in online Xbox titles, arguing that the problem is tied to how account data is packaged into network packets sent to servers, rather than raw hardware performance. Furthermore, Twitter/X user hobshy noted that similar behavior occurs on Steam, which Naded later confirmed after removing over 300 Steam friends and seeing immediate improvements in client performance.
Other individuals echoed similar experiences. Twitter/X user Gurululz stated that the difference between main and smurf accounts is “night and day” in games like Overwatch and Marvel Rivals, reinforcing long-standing rumors that fresh or low-data accounts perform better online. Meanwhile, PikminGuts92 on Twitter/X also pointed out noticeable dashboard slowdowns tied to owning hundreds of Rock Band 4 songs, suggesting that large amounts of storage space on can also impact system responsiveness on Xbox consoles.
