I guess that is why he said "some form of".
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MS: "gamers have spent more than 100M total hours playing Backward Compatible games"
- Thread starter c0de
- Start date
I guess that is why he said "some form of".
artsi
Member
Can't really say much based on that. If RDR sold 1 game per week before, it's now selling 27 games per week which is 2600% increase.
Add to that, that it is here to stay, at least from Microsoft. They will make additional money off the bc games and they are preparing for this already as every game on Xbox One is also available digitally which sadly wasn't the case with 360 games.
SaucyJack
Member
In what way?
It sounds like a large number, but if you break it down it isn't really.
BC has been around what, 8 or 9 months? With an average of somewhere between 15-20 million owners you're looking at an average of about 5 or 6 hours per owner, or 15 mins a week, of playing BC games. Which confirms my personal experience i.e. that playing old gen games, no matter how good they are, is generally a bit shit once you're used to current gen.
I'm all for BC but let's not pretend it's a big deal.
Than these 27 games per week is meaning they are only outsold by 39 other games which also isn't true: https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-video-games/zgbs/videogames/ref=pd_dp_ts_vg_1 shows that the top list doesn't only contain games.
I'm not sure if you're trying to imply that the average individual takes 15 mins a week to play a 360 game, hates it, then goes back to a week later, hates it, then goes back a week later
Which is bizarre mathematics
Iced Arcade
Member
Not surprised. Last gen to this gen is probably the smallest jump in terms of games and last gen has a massive catalog.
A lot of salty fanboys tried/still try to discredit BC.
A lot of salty fanboys tried/still try to discredit BC.
It's 100 million more than PS4 players have done. It's a big deal. That's basically an average of every owner playing another BC game per year than they would be playing otherwise. Considering the average attach rates of most consoles over their lifetimes, let alone a single year, that's actually pretty significant.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
Yes, means it pretty much almost irrelevant.
I personally love BC, but there are costs associated with it. If Microsoft has BC out of the box for their next system huge props to them. But if this is more MS marketing bs then it is messed up for gamers who like BC because it keeps their hopes alive about it for future systems.
wapplew
Member
I bet WiiU have much more hours spend on BC than Xbox one's 100m. Wonder why Nintendo don't share those numbers if that's a big deal.
TBiddy
Member
The percentages aren't "increase in sales", but "increase in rank".
Pathfinder
Member
With consoles being like PC's now, there's no reason to not have it for future systems.
I don't think they have that number.
FlutterPuffs
Member
Good number, and can the BC games be played online?
Pathfinder
Member
The Xbox 360 games in Rare Replay probably count.
It will for all the 360 games in the collection, they're basically served as standalone titles
Exactly as before
That is also what I argued last year when people were hard trying to say that nobody cares about bc. I mean, GOG actually exists and it allows people to play old games on their new computers and people actually buy games there. Same applies to Steam.
People buy old games and play them and, as you said, as consoles now are only PC (at least for Microsoft) there is no reason to not include bc from now on with every console iteration.
Of course there are costs associated with it, but people trying to downplay 5 hours average per user is ridiculous. 5 hours average per user is pretty high, the average user isn't a gaf poster that might play 20-40 hours of videogames in a week.
Perspective: The best consoles of all time in this regard tend to have around 10 games per console as an attach rate over their entire lifetimes. Bringing forward your library is pretty significant when your new console is only going to have a few games the first few years. 5 hours more might as well be most of a CoD or Halo campaign for most people. Realistically of course some people don't use the feature at all, some probably don't even know about it, and some use it much more heavily. To me that sounds basically like everyone that used it played AT LEAST a full game through during the past year with it, given that probably at least half of the users haven't tried it really. That's not insignificant at all.
Yes, you even show up playing the game on xbox live to your friends.
Yeah, anecdotal retail reports from friends are that they can't even keep black ops in stock at all anymore, and the price shot up.
LordBaztion
Member
I guess we will need to make that sum bigger if we want more Publisher's support
Caayn
Member
The XB1 basically goes into 360 mode. So yes you can play online.
Black ops saw a huge increase in players thanks to BC from a 1~2000 players it shot to >63000 players in a matter of hours.
There really isn't much costs this time, it's just an emulator on x86 architecture
One programmer working on it for a year is not cheap. plus whatever testing and certification they do, etc. They don't just go 'eh the emulator is pretty good' and not pay attention to the rest. RELATIVELY it's cheap, but it also doesn't directly feed any revenue, unlike say a sellable game.
That's true, didn't think about that, but I'm not sure that's as expensive as hardware
Not a smarmy answer, I genuinely don't know the cost comparison
SaucyJack
Member
I haven't implied that at all. It's just what the average represents.
Simple arithmetic average = bizarre mathematics! Got to love the Internet.
Oh, there is because of QA. Not as extensive as it is with the PS2 bc on PS4 (if we can believe the amount of money Sony states that is required for trophies) but still the games have to be tested to be released. Also, the emulator is still being worked on.
Pathfinder
Member
Except your math is assuming that every Xbox One owner uses the BC feature.
I don't think Sony has released numbers from it yet.
I wonder what they get from it - maintaining several datacenters with hardware just waiting to be activated if a player decides to stream a game sounds immensely costly.
It's bizarre because it's looking at user habits far too mathematically, and you did straight up make the assertion that the average user tries it for 15 minutes every week but dislikes it because the last gen is shit
Okay, but how expensive is QA compared to mass produced hardware emulation?
I don't think there's anything wrong with describing it as an average, but I think at that point you run into deception the same way people are trying to paint the original number as deceptive: You have no point of reference so it is made to sound small. 5 hours per user in ..idk 9 months? however long it's been, sounds legit as fuck to me, there are so many super super casual console gamers that barely play anything. For example I bet it's far more than the average amount of time spent by all ps4 users playing UC4. And no, I'm not attacking UC4, I'm not even sure I'm right, but I bet I am. Because you're amortizing the entirety of everyone's playtime accross a base that includes tons and tons of people that didn't even touch the thing. Spitball math says UC4 is owned by ~10% of all PS4 owners, so to reach the same number on average per user you'd have to have the people that own it have averaged 50 hours each, there's 0 chance that's even close to reality.
martino
Member
people playing for cheap prices or who can't/don't want to double dip
Bear Force One
Banned
Pretty much.
Why? it costs the publishers $0 dollars to do this. MS does all the work and the pub just haves to give the go ahead for release. It costs them nothing
Warablo
Member
I don't use it much but ^this... I'm glad moving forward for the most part games are forever persevered and backwards compatible.
Pathfinder
Member
I'm amazed that someone can take a service being used for 100 million hours and equate that as barely being used at all.
Devilgunman
Member
Is it really? Maybe we would get a better picture had MS compared it to total Xbone playtime.
Bear Force One
Banned
5hrs/console.
I guess I'm the only one which is bothered that Microsoft CAN get such statistics? I'm really reluctant to let my usage habits known, free market research and co.
Not less than a popular game... and the numbers will only increase with the years.
Pathfinder
Member
Again, that's assuming every console owner has used it.
Cmon this is the company that worked with the NSA to force the Kinect on everyone. You really don't think they don't know how many times you paused the game to go to the bathroom????
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Contex matters. Even if every single person played BC games, it would mean they only play it a handful of hours (5).
But realistically, you probably have a large swath of users that don't use it at all, a bunch of people that tried it out with a few games, and then power users(like me) who have finished multiple games using BC.
100 million hours over a year spread out between millions and millions of users is not really being used a ton by the vast majority.
Again, it's a concentrated event, but one game (a big game) did 40 million hours in 52x less time than the entirety of XBO BC.
And even though that was a huge game, it was still just one game, with a user base of 12 million total.
still more than I used that feature - but, I do realize that there are people who play/buy/own way less games than I do, and they're most likely very grateful for BC
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Yes. But "most owners" aren't the most likely to use it.
It's the owners like me, who were in the preview program, who post on forums, etc that are most likely to have put he hours into BC.
My more casual friends barely know it's possible.
Contex.