Update: Ars Technica amended their study and admitted that the data they analyzed was incomplete.
A few days ago Ars Technica came out with a study saying that backward compatibility wasn’t used. They were using some questionable math and quoting figures Microsoft shared in 2015. That alone should’ve been a clue that it was a bunch of nonsense.
Some q’s today on back compat use. Roughly 50% of xbox one owners have played, over 508 million hrs of gaming enjoyed. #pastpresentfuture
— Mike Nichols (@xboxenigma) June 7, 2017
Usually one or two BC games in our daily top played games. Usage remains high. Quality games last and are worth playing.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) June 7, 2017
You are not alone on that. Saw that in the NPD numbers, same when RDR hit. Quality is quality regardless of generation.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) June 7, 2017
However, Microsoft’s Mike Nichols just shared that around 50% of Xbox One owners use backward compatibility and those owners have played over 508 million hours of backward compatible games. That means that each gamer has played roughly 40 hours of backward compatible games. I wonder what Ars Technica will say now. Maybe next time they shouldn’t be using flawed ways to collect data and quoting 2015 figures.
Antonio was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 112 articles across game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative.