Microsoft expects "tens of millions" of 360 fans to migrate to Xbox One

Microsoft is anticipating a whole new wave of gamers to pick up the Xbox One, prompted by services like backwards compatibility.

With the launch of backwards compatibility on November 12, Microsoft is expecting a "massive migration" of players to pick up the Xbox One.

Those players are Xbox 360 owners, who according to Xbox's Aaron Greenberg, have been waiting for an excuse to upgrade their consoles.

"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," Greenberg told GameSpot.

"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."

Microsoft is promising 100 games will be backwards compatible on November 12, although it has yet to publish a full list of titles.

"On the first-party side, with our content, we've said that we're doing everything we can to make our first-party games lineup available," said Greenberg.

"And on the third-party side, we're making this available to all our third-party partners to participate. We hope that they will all participate. If folks do want third-party partners to participate in the program, they should ask them and encourage them to participate"