When the Xbox One, the third console in the Xbox family, was gearing up to be released back on November 22nd, 2013. One issue that many gamers had with the console was the fact that it would not be backwards compatible, meaning that gamers would not be able to play their Xbox 360 games on their new Xbox One consoles.
The outrage and backlash by gamers who had built up a large library of Xbox 360 games but wouldn’t be able to play them caused Microsoft to rethink their decision on backwards compatibility and actually include it in the later models of the Xbox One. However, now reports are claiming that Xbox One owners “largely ignore” the console’s backwards compatibility feature that gamers were once outraged about not receiving, when the Xbox One was first being released.
Chief marketing officer of Xbox, Mike Nichols took to Twitter today to share data points on gamers usage of the backwards compatibility feature. According to the data, approximately half of all Xbox One owner have used the backwards compatibility feature, accumulating more than 508 million total hours playing Xbox 360 games on Xbox One. Though this is a large increase from the previous 145 million hours of gameplay in August 2016 and the 210 million hours of gameplay in November 2016, 508 million hours of gameplay shows that the feature is still only used by about half of Xbox One owners, since the feature was launched in November 2015.
The Xbox One comes with a plethora of features including the newly added SoundCloud application, but it seems as though the backwards compatibility is not one of the more widely used ones. The playtime of the games may not be the only factor to consider when in Xbox One compatibility, the assortment of games may be another issue when comes to the usage of the feature, but for those who enjoy playing the Xbox 360 more than the Xbox One, knowing that older games can be played on the Xbox One may be an important factor for some who are deciding whether or not to upgrade to the new console.
In similar gaming news, Xbox’s competitor PlayStation does not provide gamers with this feature on the PlayStation 4 and according to PlayStation executive Jim Ryan, despite fans requesting the feature constantly they shouldn’t expect to receive it anytime soon. However, fans can still use PlayStation’s paid streaming service PlayStation Now to play some of their favorite PlayStation 3 games. Currently, there are more than 350 Xbox 360 games available for backwards compatibility use on Xbox One, which is good news for all you gamers who are huge fans of the Xbox 360. Happy Gaming!
Featured Image via Flickr/Bagogames
