Update: One of the versions went up 14,000%. Some versions also sold out on the retailer’s website and won’t be back in stock until next week.
Red Dead Redemption was officially announced for Xbox One backward compatibility today and it caused a sales spike on Amazon. One of the versions rose almost 5,000% to become the top mover and shaker on the retail giant’s website. Similar spikes were observed in other marketplaces like Best Buy and GameStop.
It’s funny how many months ago we heard that backward compatibility didn’t matter and now that we have games like Fallout 3 and Red Dead Redemption people are upset. For example, one PlayStation owner wanted gamers to send the United States government letters so that they would investigate why Red Dead Redemption is only backward compatible on Xbox One and not PlayStation 4 or Windows. I initially thought this was a joke but the gentleman is quite serious. The government has nothing better to do than to investigate why a game isn’t on your console? Really?
Despite the conspiracy theories it’s great to see that backward compatible games are doing so well. I hope more developers bring their titles over because it benefits publishers and gamers. Rockstar is considered a dominant force in the industry and surely their example will be followed by many others who might be on the fence about the feature. Additionally, I wonder how significant the digital sales spike was because that was by far the cheapest version available today.
Source: Amazon
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.