Red Dead Redemption has always been a popular game due to its story, gameplay and setting. However, it’s been out for a long time and sales have decreased quite significantly. Not anymore though. Since yesterday Red Dead Redemption sales have climbed by 400% on Amazon at the time of writing. Other retailers experienced similar surges. The surge might be even more when you’re reading this.
It was confirmed that Red Dead Redemption would be backward compatible yesterday and many users could play the game. Even though only digital copies seemed to work, the fact that people knew it would be backward compatible got them to buy the disc version in droves. When backward compatible was first announed, I realized that many mainstream outlets said it didn’t matter and probably wouldn’t have an affect on game sales. They called it a “novelty feature” that was only good for publicity and good will. That definitely isn’t the case as demonstrated by the spike in sales of Red Dead Redemption for Xbox 360. I wonder what those writers have to say now.
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.