Board 8 > Ars Technica: Xbox One users largely ignore backward-compatible Xbox 360 games

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/backward-compatible-xbox-360-games-are-less-than-2-of-xbox-one-usage-time/

Our analysis used a third-party API to randomly sample usage data from nearly one million active Xbox One Gamertags over a period of nearly five months starting last September (read the introductory piece for much more about the data and methodology). In the end, only about 1.5 percent of the more than 1.65 billion minutes of Xbox One usage time we tracked was spent on the 300+ backward-compatible Xbox 360 games, in aggregate. That translates to an average of just 23.9 minutes per sampled active Xbox One user spent on Xbox 360 games out of 1,526 average minutes of Xbox One usage during the sampling period.

Things don't look better for backward compatibility when you look at individual games. The most popular backward-compatible title in our sample, Call of Duty: Black Ops, was played by three or four out of every 1,000 active Xbox Live users, which is actually competitive with some of the most popular Xbox One titles. Usage rates for less-popular games drop off steeply from there, though, and no other backward-compatible title even ranks in the top 100 most popular Xbox One apps in terms of total unique users.

This isn't a foolproof equation, though. From further into the article:

All of these sources of potential error make us uncomfortable using our data to directly extrapolate total sales or usage numbers for the entire Xbox playerbase. The numbers and ratios presented in this report should only be considered representative, sampled estimates of the online portion of the Xbox community, which could be significantly different from the total community of Xbox owners. You can try to multiply out our percentages by reported hardware sales numbers if you want, but we wouldn’t stand behind that extrapolation.

---

Saw something about backwards compatibility some Sony exec in that it was a heavily requested feature but one that likely wouldn't see much use. Guess this lends credence to that argument.
---

I'll admit to not using it much

but

having the option is better than not.
---

I find YouTube on consoles to be really cumbersome. That's a decent chunk.
---

I play more 360 games on my Xbox One than I do Xbox One games. Its the main thing I do on the system and the biggest reason I got one.

Of course I probably don't play enough on my XBOne to make a dent in the minutes category.

Then again I would use it more if not for the fact that half my 360 games are not backwards compatible. At this point I might still be playing on my 360 more than my One in 2017.
---

I use BC all the time, it's an awesome feature.

I wonder if they meant BO2 for their article rather than BO1, because BO2 has been huge the past month.
---

Snake5555555555 posted...

I use BC all the time, it's an awesome feature.

I wonder if they meant BO2 for their article rather than BO1, because BO2 has been huge the past month.

Looking at the diagram, their tracking ended in February; BO2 didn't become b/c until April.
---

Oh whoops, didn't notice that.
---

This chart does make a lot of sense when you consider that the most popular games, especially on Xbox, are mostly service games or franchises with iterative sequels. There's no need to look unless you have a COD situation where there's a major fracture point in the fanbase.

I do think BC is something worth investing in, however. It's an easy way for game companies to earn money on their back catalogue. And this is purely anecdotal, but I've spent more time on my Xbox One playing 360 games than Xbox One games, and I make many of my purchases with an eye to the future. A game that I can't carry forward with me is less attractive than one that I can.

ffmasterjose posted...

I find YouTube on consoles to be really cumbersome. That's a decent chunk.

it's the most convenient way to get YouTube on a big screen unless you cast it, and casting isn't 100% reliable.
---

ffmasterjose posted...

I find YouTube on consoles to be really cumbersome. That's a decent chunk.

I don't really think they should be lumped. I have both consoles and the degree to which XBone YouTube and Netflix apps are worse than their PS4 counterparts is shocking.
---

iiicon posted...

it's the most convenient way to get YouTube on a big screen.

My AppleTV says otherwise
---

oh yeah I guess you can do the same thing with an AppleTV. That thing is always a personal blindspot because it was limited in apps up here for so long that most people I know went with another streaming device.
---

What this really says is that people will just forgo BC altogether rather than maintaining a mental list of which games are BC.

iiicon posted...

it's the most convenient way to get YouTube on a big screen unless you cast it, and casting isn't 100% reliable.

I like plugging my laptop in to my TV with an HDMI cable and using a wireless keyboard and mouse because then I get to use my computer on the couch :3
---

anecdotally, i see a lot of people using BC and excited about it but it's not exactly a large sample size
---

Now that Killer Instinct is on PC, I largely ignore my Xbox One.
---

digiiiiiiiii posted...

anecdotally, i see a lot of people using BC and excited about it but it's not exactly a large sample size

yeah I think it's more common among high spending enthusiasts who talk about games on gaming forums
---