Earlier this week a report was published suggesting that Xbox One players barely play backward compatible Xbox 360 games. Data collected using the Xbox Live API seemed to reveal that less than 2% of Xbox One usage was spent playing the older titles.

Microsoft has now issued a statement slamming that data as "grossly inaccurate" among other things. The company has explained that the API data, which was taken from one million active Xbox Live gamertags, provides an "approximation of the time spent in a game" so that players can compare it with their peers. Additionally, some players within the sample size may have opted out of sharing their data. Therefore, the total usage times may have been extremely underestimated by Ars Technica, the publication which initially put together the report.

Microsoft pointed out several inaccuracies, citing its own data which said that the Xbox One's My Games and Apps feature is used by 71% of players, not 6.3% as the report claimed. The company also said that based on its complete picture of the data, "players are highly engaged with backwards compatible game titles"  that the original report was "grossly inaccurate and misleading due to an incomplete set of data and drawing conclusions about actual usage from data that approximates usage."

Microsoft's rebuttal comes right as the company used E3 2017 to announce that original Xbox games will be backward compatible on Xbox One. Clearly the company would not invest so much time and resources in improving the feature even more if it felt that few of its players were interested in playing it.

Unfortunately, though, this still doesn't mean that the backward compatible games saga has ended. Microsoft also hit back at Sony's stance on backward compatible games, criticizing its technology rival for not delivering what its fans want. At the time Sony looked like it was in the right as it stated that gamers just aren't interested in actually using the feature – something which the Xbox report seemed to support.

However, with that data debunked and Xbox fans giddy about the possibility of playing original Xbox games on their newer consoles, Sony could face renewed calls from fans to introduce the feature on PS4. Right now the company looks incredibly reluctant to do so but it may well cave under the immense pressure it faces from a vocal fanbase.

Source: Ars Technica