Xbox One backward compatibility isn’t as popular as you think

4.4

The backward compatibility program on Xbox One that allows users to play a selection of over three hundred Xbox 360 titles on their current-gen consoles was a fan favorite when it launched back in November 2015. In fact, Xbox boasted that users had spent over 9 million hours with Xbox 360 games on their Xbox Ones within the first month. But it turns out that not that many people are using it now.

According to a recent study by Ars Technica, only 1.5 percent of Xbox One users’ time is spent playing Xbox 360 backward compatible games. On top of that, the only backward compatible game that made the list of the top 100 most popular Xbox One apps was Call of Duty: Black Ops.

The analysis was done by taking a random sample of data from 930,000 active Xbox One gamertags over the course of five months. Out of 1,526 average minutes that Xbox One users were active during this sample period, only 23.9 minutes were spent playing Xbox 360 backward compatible games.

Meanwhile, 54.7 percent of user time was spent playing Xbox One games, while 16.5 percent was spent watching Netflix (or falling asleep while Netflix was still on).

This study seems to confirm that Sony global sales chief Jim Ryan’s excuse for why PlayStation 4 wasn’t getting a backward compatibility program is actually legitimate. The numbers don’t lie.

That being said, the fact that Xbox does have backward compatibility wins it some bragging rights over PlayStation 4, which Xbox has been keen to exploit in the past. It’s not that backward compatibility is a killer app that sells consoles. It’s that bragging about having backward compatibility makes PS4 players wish they had it, too, thus sowing (however tiny) the seeds of discontent within the user base.

The method of this and a related study might be a bit flawed, however, seeing as how the most popular non-game app was the “My games & apps” tab. For non-Xbox users, “My games and apps” is where you navigate in the Xbox UI to simply manage and start your games and apps. We’re not sure if an app you use to open other apps should really count in this kind of analysis.

Posted: Jun 06, 2017 8:25 pm
Related Forum: Xbox Forum

Source: http://www.egmnow.com/all/xbox-one-backward-compatibility-isnt-as-popular-as-you-think/

Comments

EchoPosted: Wed. Jun 07, 2017

More player wanted game's can boost numbers. GTA IV, BO & BO2 were great addition's and there's several others. Don't add game's there's not a high demand for.

MissPosted: Wed. Jun 07, 2017

I don't like that I can't save my Lego games.

Original_LayPosted: Wed. Jun 07, 2017

Decy
Urf
Hollywood_Undead False statistics. Probably a false source as well.

Ah, the classic "the results don't fit with my beliefs so it must be fake"

Of course its false stats.... there is no Accurate stats for anything.

Well let's look at some stats. Black Ops 2 population increase big time with around 50k players just in multiplayer. That gives me a ideal that there must be millions of players actively online simultaneously, if there's only 1.5 percent of the players on Xbox One playing Xbox 360 games.

SkatesPosted: Wed. Jun 07, 2017

Well to be honest like 80% of the bc'd games are complete crap. If they did more of the well liked games the numbers would be way different.

DecyPosted: Wed. Jun 07, 2017

Urf
Hollywood_Undead False statistics. Probably a false source as well.

Ah, the classic "the results don't fit with my beliefs so it must be fake"

Of course its false stats.... there is no Accurate stats for anything.

MeowersPosted: Tue. Jun 06, 2017

Or maybe the sampling started far before good games were released and the fact that they were watching what people play is pretty creepy, especially when it's not Microsoft. Half of my friendslist plays Black Ops 2 so don't know how that is accurate at all.

Dover5Posted: Tue. Jun 06, 2017

Maybe if they managed to put relevant games to play people would actually play it more.

5FDP_JekyllPosted: Tue. Jun 06, 2017

I usually jump back and forth, I mean heck half of my installed games are 360 games. Even spent about the whole month of March just playing through all of ME. Anyways, with the size that was studied it seems to be a decently accurate statistic, however, statistics is never exact, it could be an average figure, could be more, or potentially even less.

UziPosted: Tue. Jun 06, 2017

If I had an Xbox One, I would probably spend the majority of my time reliving my favourite moments from my favourite Xbox 360 titles. Some people have more interest than others when it comes to backwards compatibility, but it's a good feature to have either way.