You may experience crashes when playing Elden Ring on the Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S.
To see how you can prevent the game from freezing, you can take a look at this troubleshooting article from Seeking Tech.
1. If Elden Ring is currently frozen, we recommend closing the software from the system menu by taking the following steps:
- Press and hold the Xbox button on your controller to open the Guide menu.
- From the Guide menu, scroll to the Elden Ring icon.
- With the Elden Ring icon highlighted, press the Menu button on the controller.
- In the pop-up menu of the game, select Quit.
2. If the Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S system seems to be completely frozen and won’t respond to the controller inputs, then we recommend forcing your console to shut down by pressing and holding the Xbox button located directly on your console for at least 30 seconds.
3. Clearing the cache may also help stop the crashes when playing Elden Ring. In order to do so, you can take the following steps:
- Turn off your Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S system completely.
- After shutting down the console, unplug its power cord from the power outlet.
- With the system unplugged, wait for at least 2 minutes.
- After 2 minutes have passed, plug the Series X or Series S back into the power outlet.
- Turn on your system and then start playing Elden Ring to see if clearing the cache makes the game less prone to crashing.
4. We also recommend that you keep your game updated by downloading the latest patch as it may help fix the crashing problems.
In order to update Elden Ring, you need to do the following:
- Power on your Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S.
- Make sure that your game console is connected online.
- If an update for Elden Ring doesn’t automatically start to download, press the Xbox button on your controller to open the Guide menu.
- In the Guide menu, select My Games & Apps.
- In the My Games & Apps menu, select See All.
- In the Games menu, navigate over to the Elden Ring icon.
- With the Elden Ring icon highlighted, press the Menu button.
- In the pop-up menu, select Manage Game and Add-Ons.
- In the Manage – Elden Ring menu, select updates.
- In the Elden Ring – Updates menu, you will see whether or not a new software version of the game is available for download and installation.
5. A firmware update for your Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S may also help improve the stability of the console.
To update, you need to do the following:
- Turn on your game system if you haven’t done so already.
- Make sure that your console is currently connected to the internet.
- If you don’t get a prompt that ask you to update the firmware of your Series X or Series S, then you should press the Xbox button on the controller.
- In the Guide menu, press the RB button several times until you get to the Profile & System tab.
- From the Profile & System tab, go to Settings.
- From the Settings menu, select System from the left column.
- You then need to select updates on the right side in the same menu.
- In the System – Updates menu, you should see whether or not a new firmware is available for download and installation.
6. We also recommend that you avoid using the Quick Resume feature as it may cause issues with Elden Ring.
Instead, you should manually quit your current game session using the in-game menu of Elden Ring. Afterwards, press the Xbox button and then scroll down to the Elden Ring icon. With the game’s icon highlighted, press the Menu button on your controller and then select Quit.
We recommend doing this every time in order to avoid putting your game in Quick Resume. You should also back up your Elden Ring save as much as possible so that you won’t lose much progress if the game crashes and corrupts your save file.
7. You should also close any other games that you have suspended by taking the following steps:
- Open the Guide menu by pressing the Xbox button on your Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S controller.
- In the Guide menu, select My Games and Apps.
- In the My Games and Apps menu, scroll to the Quick Resume section.
- In the Quick Resume section, press the Menu button on your controller on a game icon and then select Remove from Quick Resume.
- Make sure that the Quick Resume section is completely empty to completely clear out the queue.
8. If the internal or expansion storage gets too full, then you may run into performance issues when playing Elden Ring.
Ideally, you should leave at least 25% of free space on the internal SSD or expansion SSD.
If your solid state drive have less than 25% free space, then we recommend deleting and/or transferring any screenshots, videos and/or games.
In order to move or delete games, you need to do the following:
- Open the Settings menu and then select System on the left column. On the right side of the same menu, select Storage Devices.
- In the Storage Devices menu, select the SSD where you have Elden Ring installed.
- In the pop-up menu, you can select “Move or Copy” to transfer game files or “Uninstall Content” to delete game files.
9. The Elden Ring crashing issues may also be related to your Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S overheating.
To learn more about how you can prevent your console from overheating, you should take a look at this guide.
10. We also recommend testing out other games in your library to see if they are also crashing or freezing.
If the other games running on your Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S appear seem to be playing perfectly fine, then your issues are isolated to Elden Ring.
If other games are also causing your game system to freeze, then you may have a hardware related problem. For hardware issues, we recommend contacting Microsoft as you may need to get you Xbox Series console fixed or replaced.