Utility of Backwards Compatibility

[shredenvain]

I'm a fan of BC on Xbox. Sure most of my time goes into current gen games, but the fact that I can go back and play games like Half-life 2 orange box and the BioShock series is a huge bonus. I sure as hell take advantage of it!

I also own a Ps4 that I love. I missed out on tons of Ps3 exclusive last gen because I didn't own a Ps3. So if I ever want to play great titles like the Resistance series or Killzone 2/3 I'm stuck with the financial burden of buying a used Ps3 or subscribing to Sony's overpriced (IMO) streaming service.

With the Xbox BC even if I didn't own a bunch of 360 games I could always take a trip to my local Gamestop and pick up some great titles for a very low price or buy them digitally from Xbox store. Its a total win for any Xbox gamer.

 

[zed]

it's obvious there is something strange and shady here.

Unfortunately the fact that completely nullifys that statement, is the article is written by Kyle Orland, In case you dont know Cyan, he's about as Pro Xbox as you are!
500 million hours lifetime may seem a lot, but you hear MS saying Billions of hours on xbox live per month, 500 million hours over a couple of years is equivilant the number of hours this week from monday to wednesday

 

[dobwal]

The Xbox One BC feature is not three and a half years old as it wasn't available at launch. It launched a little over 18 months ago as it was made widely available on nov 12, 2015.

Unless something has changed in user behavior since last gen, your average gamer spends about 6 hours a week gaming on consoles. So, if that behavior holds true with the 50% of Xbox one gamers who used BC, then that 508 million hours of BC play averages out to about 5-6 weeks worth of gaming time.

I don't thinks it a coincidence that MS released these figures a little under 2 months since one of the most requested XB1 BC titles (BLOPS 2) was released. And that 4 and half year old game actually sold well enough to place in last April's Top 10 NPD list.

 

[Cyan]

Unfortunately the fact that completely nullifys that statement, is the article is written by Kyle Orland, In case you dont know Cyan, he's about as Pro Xbox as you are!
500 million hours lifetime may seem a lot, but you hear MS saying Billions of hours on xbox live per month, 500 million hours over a couple of years is equivilant the number of hours this week from monday to wednesday

it always depends on the actual people having access to BC games, but I understand what you mean. BC titles, save the ones given montly with XBL Gold appear in your account out of the blue, they go totally unnoticed because of that, and they aren't being sold, so the marketing isn't the same.

Plus, original Xbox One games take up a LOT of space, BC games suffer from space contention. If you have a 500GB HD, a handful of Xbox One games make your HD drop down to a whisper.

 

[AzBat]

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017...ed-usage-data-in-our-xbox-unleashed-analysis/

ROFL

Tommy McClain

 

[BRiT]

First few snippest, i suggest reading the entire article...

-----

Microsoft has given us reason to believe the usage data provided by Xbox API consisted of incomplete estimates of total Xbox Live usage, and does not reflect a complete account of recent usage sessions by the sampled Gamertags. While the data provided seemed reliable in our spot tests, Microsoft tells us the API was "intended to display to each Xbox gamer an approximation of the time spent in a game so that they have the option to compare it with other gamers on the service."

That fault in the underlying data has led us to vastly underestimate total usage times for the apps and games in our usage sample. Graphs and charts that refer to average minutes played or percentage of users who played a game during that 4.5 month period seem to be an order of magnitude lower than the actual per-app usage rates and times. The "My Games and Apps" section of the Xbox One was used by 71 percent of Xbox One players during our sample, according to Microsoft, not the approximately 6.3 percent shown by our data.

"We specifically know, based on our complete view of Xbox Live usage data, players are highly engaged with backwards compatible game titles," Microsoft said by way of additional example. "It’s why we continue to support this well-loved feature and the games that use it."

 

[Grall]

MS updating 360 games might light a fire under Sony's butt to maybe do something about their miserable state of backwards (non)compatibility...

Well, one can always dream!

 

[iroboto]

MS updating 360 games might light a fire under Sony's butt to maybe do something about their miserable state of backwards (non)compatibility...

Well, one can always dream!

With the admission that silicon needed to be altered to make it happen prior to the launch of XBO, it unlikely to be in the cards for this gen. PS5 may have it though, ideally both PS3 and 4 games supported

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I suppose it needs to be shown there's a financial benefit. If MS's console earnings increase in response, it's more justifiable to spend. The results on XB are awesome though. Really encourages the platform for forward thinking. Definitely think MS should make the BC games run awesomely on Windows 10 to spread the Xbox platform beyond console hardware numbers. PC owners buying XBox games will only increase interest in XB consoles.

 

[iroboto]

I suppose it needs to be shown there's a financial benefit. If MS's console earnings increase in response, it's more justifiable to spend. The results on XB are awesome though. Really encourages the platform for forward thinking. Definitely think MS should make the BC games run awesomely on Windows 10 to spread the Xbox platform beyond console hardware numbers. PC owners buying XBox games will only increase interest in XB consoles.

Yea I pretty much agree.

I think with MS, this is their cornerstone strategy to attract their base back. Basically they now have 3 methods in which core xbox players can buy into the hardware and play
a) their catalog of games over 3 generations
b) EA Access
c) Game Pass

It's all the same type of service, massive libraries for very little cost. They've been focusing on this aspect, and combined with a strong offering in 3rd party graphics, and you're going into next generation with a lot of good will on your side, as opposed to having to lose your entire base and start next gen even further behind.

This has been a really good attempt to get those xbox players that converted to PS4 back to xbox, and get them thinking about furthering their investment in xbox for next gen as opposed to continuing their gaming on Sony's platform for instance.

 

[Rangers]

I suppose it needs to be shown there's a financial benefit. If MS's console earnings increase in response, it's more justifiable to spend. The results on XB are awesome though. Really encourages the platform for forward thinking. Definitely think MS should make the BC games run awesomely on Windows 10 to spread the Xbox platform beyond console hardware numbers. PC owners buying XBox games will only increase interest in XB consoles.

Wrong topic I'm sure. but I haven't seen one evidence BC has done zilch for MS sales. As obviously they've remained far behind all gen, if anything perhaps slipping lately.

Still a nice feature I'll take it.

 

[iroboto]

Wrong topic I'm sure. but I haven't seen one evidence BC has done zilch for MS sales. As obviously they've remained far behind all gen, if anything perhaps slipping lately.

Still a nice feature I'll take it.

It's kept them relevant. I wouldn't be so quick to denounce it. People still want powerful hardware. Now they have both platform and hardware. Now people just want some special titles hey can sink their money into.

Investing into BC is an investment into the platform, where investing in niche Gsmes like media molecule is an investment in library.

BC sells a lot more than those niche games though.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Wrong topic I'm sure. but I haven't seen one evidence BC has done zilch for MS sales. As obviously they've remained far behind all gen, if anything perhaps slipping lately.

Still a nice feature I'll take it.

I doubt it shifts hardware, but if software sales are higher, it could be worth the investment. That is, if every XB1 owners spends on average another $20 over and above their usual expenditure on BC titles, that's however much to offset against the cost of the emulation. Pretty hard to prove I imagine. You'd need to compare average spend on years without BC and how that's changed with BC, and do lots of jiggery-pokery and sales, discounts, big titles, etc.

 

[Nesh]

First few snippest, i suggest reading the entire article...

-----

Microsoft has given us reason to believe the usage data provided by Xbox API consisted of incomplete estimates of total Xbox Live usage, and does not reflect a complete account of recent usage sessions by the sampled Gamertags. While the data provided seemed reliable in our spot tests, Microsoft tells us the API was "intended to display to each Xbox gamer an approximation of the time spent in a game so that they have the option to compare it with other gamers on the service."

That fault in the underlying data has led us to vastly underestimate total usage times for the apps and games in our usage sample. Graphs and charts that refer to average minutes played or percentage of users who played a game during that 4.5 month period seem to be an order of magnitude lower than the actual per-app usage rates and times. The "My Games and Apps" section of the Xbox One was used by 71 percent of Xbox One players during our sample, according to Microsoft, not the approximately 6.3 percent shown by our data.

"We specifically know, based on our complete view of Xbox Live usage data, players are highly engaged with backwards compatible game titles," Microsoft said by way of additional example. "It’s why we continue to support this well-loved feature and the games that use it."

Considering the memories I had formed and the amount of games I have purchased on my Playstation consoles, I wish Sony would have done the same. MS is building a lasting ecosystem as well as loyalty that spans through time. The extra benefit with MS's BC is also the fact, that unlike Sony's BC offer in the past, MS also uses the hardware performance to improve the experience of those BC games. Thats a motivation to go back and replay.
This is why I believe BC on PS consoles never picked up the way they should have. They played exactly as they did on past hardware. Pixelated and framerate mess. And this is why people buy indie games and old games on PCs (see steam) because even though they are not on par with the biggest games out there, they use the extra juice.

 

[iroboto]

Considering the memories I had formed and the amount of games I have purchased on my Playstation consoles, I wish Sony would have done the same. MS is building a lasting ecosystem as well as loyalty that spans through time. The extra benefit with MS's BC is also the fact, that unlike Sony's BC offer in the past, MS also uses the hardware performance to improve the experience of those BC games. Thats a motivation to go back and replay.
This is why I believe BC on PS consoles never picked up the way they should have. They played exactly as they did on past hardware. Pixelated and framerate mess. And this is why people buy indie games and old games on PCs (see steam) because even though they are not on par with the biggest games out there, they use the extra juice.

Well I definitely think that Sony can implement a solution for PS5 for instance. MS will be further ahead in terms of maturity of the service, and their goals and direction with BC will be far more developed than Sony if Sony begins next year, but that's to be expected as MS has been working on this for some time now, and has continued to develop and go through this process with years of experience.

I can totally see new contracts being drafted at MS with the developers/publishers already, designed to deal with BC in the future so that they don't need to go through this painful exercise again.
And I think we'll see BC on PS5. So at the very least, you'll have some BC capability with PS4, and if they are very serious about it, PS3.

As MS has said multiple times in their interviews, the hardest part of BC is the licensing.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

MS really should be making a deal of 'your games forever*' to communicate the added value. Even if people don't use it, psychologically there's something there in choosing platforms thinking that with this one, whatever games you buy you'll be able to play in the future, whereas the other means that money is 'wasted' in the long term.

* Sorry, should have used contemporary marketing speak.

Your Games. Forever.

 

[bunge]

Side note: Microsoft has decades of experience with hardware independent software licensing. I’m not sure Sony can just offer backwards compatibility to all games.

 

[Jay]

Side note: Microsoft has decades of experience with hardware independent software licensing. I’m not sure Sony can just offer backwards compatibility to all games.

MS maybe, Xbox division not written contracts like that though.
otherwise they wouldn't have to go through all the hoops they do.
it wouldn't be any more or less on the sony side I suspect, in fact it's either going to be same amount of work or less, also its not like sony has never dealt with BC before regardless how it was implemented.

 

[mpg1]

I think BC for Xbox is pretty smart move on Microsoft's part. When you look at the the popularity of emulators on the PC side of things...putting in the work of getting BC going back several gens on a console is definitely going to add some value to the system. Especially if Microsoft is able to retroactively improve the visual quality/performance of games.

I mean even if you didn't care for Xbox One's first party I could people picking up a X1S or X1X in the future when the prices drop just to have as system that can play a large spanning catalogue.

 

[iroboto]

I think BC for Xbox is pretty smart move on Microsoft's part. When you look at the the popularity of emulators on the PC side of things...putting in the work of getting BC going back several gens on a console is definitely going to add some value to the system. Especially if Microsoft is able to retroactively improve the visual quality/performance of games.

I mean even if you didn't care for Xbox One's first party I could people picking up a X1S or X1X in the future when the prices drop just to have as system that can play a large spanning catalogue.

It's their best value proposition right now: Stronger hardware to provide "new experiences" even for older titles, carry all those games you missed forward, with a possibly better experience than if you had played it from the get go.