The PlayStation 4 has been dominating this generation of consoles, but Microsoft believes that things will start to turn in the Xbox One’s favor this Christmas. Despite previous claims that backwards compatibility would be virtually impossible on this generation of consoles, Microsoft surprised everyone, especially Sony, when it announced that most of the Xbox 360 library would be making its way to the Xbox One. This means that Xbox 360 users have little reason not to switch to the Xbox One anymore, which means we’re going to see a lot of Xbox One upgrades this holiday season.
The Xbox 360 was a massive success for Microsoft, and they’re banking on that legacy for a successful holiday season this year. Talking with Gamespot, Microsoft marketing head Aaron Greenberg said that Microsoft is expecting a “massive migration” of players this year. “There’s tens of millions of Xbox 360 fans that are out there that are still playing on Xbox 360 and they’re waiting for the right time and the right reason to migrate over to Xbox One,” he said. “Whether they’ve been waiting for the first true next-gen Halo with Halo 5 or if they’ve been waiting for solutions like backwards compatibility, we do expect to see a pretty massive migration this holiday of those fans.” Greenberg said regarding backwards compatibility that the team is doing everything possible to bring first party titles to Xbox One and that for third party titles, they encourage fans to contact those companies to push for their favorites to show up on the backwards compatibility list. Backwards compatibility is a fan favorite feature, but is it a system seller? Probably not if the gamer already has an Xbox 360. We’ll see this holiday season, though, if Greenberg is right.