When Microsoft announced that the Xbox One would play Xbox 360 games through backwards compatibility, some wondered how popular the feature might be. As it turns out, it's very popular. Microsoft announced today that Xbox One players have collectively logged almost 1 billion hours playing Original Xbox and Xbox 360 games on Xbox One.


In June 2017, Microsoft announced that people had spent 508 million hours using backwards compatibility, so usage is only growing. According to Microsoft, around half of all Xbox One owners have used the feature. Some have questioned whether or not people actually use backwards compatibility, and of course they do.

Microsoft adds more games to the backwards compatibility catalog on a semi-regular basis; just this week, Saints Row 2 was added. In addition to hundreds of Xbox 360 games, there are more than two-dozen Original Xbox games in the catalog. You can see a full rundown of all the backwards compatibility games here.


In some cases, backwards compatibility games look markedly improved on Xbox One X. Red Dead Redemption, for example--a game that came out in 2010--looks stunning on Microsoft's newest console.


In related news, as of this week, Gamerscore you unlock playing Xbox 360 games on Xbox One counts toward the monthly Xbox Live Gamerscore leaderboard.


Microsoft's blog post today contained some other noteworthy Xbox datapoints, including:

• The number of Xbox Live players is up 13 percent year-over-year.
• Xbox One sales up 15 percent year-over-year.
• More than 600,000 "friendships" have been made using the Looking For Group feature.
• There are now more than 1.2 million Clubs on Xbox Live.
• There are now more than 200 games that are "enhanced" for Xbox One X.
• Players have collectively logged more than 4 billion hours of ID@Xbox games.
• Mixer now has more than 10 million active users.