Microsoft Defends Xbox One Backward Compatibility, But Stats Show Players Barely Use It

We’re nearly four years into the current console generation, and Sony and Microsoft are waging a [...]

By Nathan Birch

WWGxboxones
(Photo: Microsoft)

We're nearly four years into the current console generation, and Sony and Microsoft are waging a war of words about backward compatibility. Isn't this a something you guys should have hashed out back in 2014? This all kicked off when Sony global sales chief Jim Ryan offered some rather dismissive comments about backward compatibility in an interview with Time.

"When we've dabbled with backwards compatibility, I can say it is one of those features that is much requested, but not actually used much. That, and I was at a Gran Turismo event recently where they had PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4 games, and the PS1 and the PS2 games, they looked ancient, like why would anybody play this?"

That's a rather narrow view to take, but it isn't necessarily an incorrect one. Nevertheless, Xbox vice president Mike Ybarra fired back in response to a Kotaku article about Ryan's comments:

Of course, this begs the question – do most people actually care about playing Xbox 360 games on Xbox One? According to Ars Technica, the answer is a definitive "no."

Ars used a third-party app to sample usage data from a million randomly-selected Xbox One Gamertags, and found that Xbox 360 backwards compatibility is the system's least-used feature. Breaking it down, 54.7 percent of Xbox One users' time is spent playing Xbox One games, 16.5 percent is spent watching Netflix, and a paltry 1.5 percent is spent playing Xbox 360 games.

WWGxboxonebackcompat
(Photo: Ars Technica)

According to Ars, the only Xbox 360 game that gets any sort of serious play is Call of Duty: Black Ops, with 4 out of 1000 users having played the game on their Xbox One. Trailing far behind in second and third place are Skate 3 and Mass Effect 3.

Honestly, I'm not terribly shocked by these results. Backward compatibility is one of those features that looks good on the back of the box, but rarely gets used. I'll admit, I'm more likely to buy a system with backward compatibility, and am annoyed when it isn't included, but usually I end up playing maybe one or two old games on my new system before forgetting the feature altogether.

You can check out the full list of Xbox 360 games playable on Xbox One, right here.

[via Ars Technica]

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