On Twitter, Mike Ybarra, the corporate vice president of the Xbox and Windows gaming platform at Microsoft, said that he “disagreed” with Sony’s point of view. The executive wrote that “[Microsoft wants] gamers to play the best games of the past, current, and future,” also noting that Xbox backwards compatibility is “what gamers asked for.”
However, although many fans have indeed asked for the feature, according to new data, very few Xbox One users actually play Xbox 360 games. When a Twitter follower pointed out this data to the Xbox executive, Ybarra hit back at the report, saying, “Scraping some data off servers gives an inaccurate view of what people do.”
Scraping some data off servers gives an inaccurate view of what people do.
— Mike Ybarra (@XboxQwik) June 6, 2017
It is in Microsoft’s best interests to defend its backward compatibility feature and to fight back at critics who would suggest that people aren’t using it, but Ybarra’s reply has divided fans. Some argue that the data does not represent the full picture, while others say that this entire debate could be put to rest if Microsoft just released usage figures. Xbox boss Phil Spencer previously revealed that almost 50% of Xbox One users have played backward compatible games, but up-to-date usage figures that include minutes-played have not been disclosed by the company.
As Microsoft keeps this data under wraps, it seems that this argument will rage on for now. It also seems quite likely that this could be the next battleground for the company, alongside PS4 Pro versus the power of Xbox Project Scorpio. It’s easy to see how Microsoft, with the knowledge that PlayStation fans are desperate to play older games on PS4 in an affordable way, will promote backward compatibility as a key selling point of its own console.
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Source: https://gamerant.com/xbox-sony-backward-compatibility-stance-criticism/
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