We talk about this topic a lot on the ReaperCast, Who cares about Back Compat? @anon3687162 is the most vocal about saying who gives a fuck about old titles. I found this article on Kotaku.com explaining how little backwards compatible titles are played. I know I have no interest. I haven’t played any old titles other than firing up BLOPS 2 for a single GRG night. Really, there’s just no going back.
Call of Duty: Black Ops was the most popular backward-compatible Xbox 360 game in Ars Technica’s September to February sample, but only three out of every thousand Xbox One users plays it. And Black Ops is an outlier—Rayman Origins and Skate 3, the next two most-played Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One, are played only one-third as much. Ars Technica reports that “The hundreds of backward compatible Xbox 360 games combine to represent less than half of the play time that a game like Grand Theft Auto V manages on its own.”
I agree, I don’t GAF. I thought I would honestly, and I’ve played a bit of a couple of BC titles, but it’s just so hard to go back to old titles. My kids play quite a bit of BC however, so that’s cool. Gives me more “new” games for them to play.
I think JC makes a good point about how much people think they will want to play their older titles.
Especially when the new console is launching and there are no/few games available - you think you’ll want to play your older titles alongside your new ones.
The thing about retro is that there needs to be time before people with nostalgia play it more than a couple of times. The only retro I keep going back to is classic arcade games, mainly because there was a longer gap between when I played those and when I returned to them. The 360 games haven’t been gone long enough to build that nostalgia (and I’d argue that classic arcade pick up and play makes it more appealing as well).
We tried BLOPS2 one night. It was fun even if that’s the title that made me stop loving CoD.
The main issue is the party / invite system on Back Compat titles. You have to have people on your XBox 360 friends list and invite them in the emulated 360 UI. Which can be painful. I lost interest right away with all the menu issues I have.
I care, until I replay a game for an hour and realize I have better, more advanced games to play. There are a couple that I may go back to at some point, but mostly for nostalgic reasons. IDGAF
Not sure I care about the BC games but how about some BC peripherals? Some were pretty high priced for everyone and now they gather dust or get ebay’d. I’d feel that would be more valuable to folks.
If you dive into the comments and pay attention to the very small time span they polled the numbers the results don’t show the whole truth. The poll ran for 5 months during the time that all the major games get released.
I think this means a little bit too. I am sure the numbers sky rockted after this…
It’s worth noting that the data doesn’t stretch to April, when Call of Duty: Black Ops II became backward-compatible with the Xbox One and led to an explosion in its player-base.
I guess what I am getting at is you can skew statistics any way you want for a story. That being said. I could care less for BC.
It’s nice to know I have the option to play backwards compatible games but I haven’t used it in a longtime. It would have been nice if these games were backwards compatible when the Xbox One launched considering there weren’t many game options at the time. With all the “re-masters” coming out backwards compatibility is becoming less relative.
I have used for only Black Ops 2 played for bit but they just get so hacked up without support. Otherwise I much prefer them to spend the time on new releases. It really has no impact for me as far as what console or games to buy. Personally I’m a bit worried about the no exclusive games with xbox “ecosystem”
