Xbox One Games with Gold backwards-compatability update: "Tomb Raider: Underworld" and "Army of Two" to be added in 2018

The Microsoft Xbox One S, displayed at the Xbox E3 media briefing in Los Angeles, 2016.Reuters/Lucy Nicholson

With 156 Original Xbox and Xbox 360 games available to the Xbox One through its backward-compatibility program in 2017 alone, Microsoft has announced that more backward-compatible games will be released in as early as January 2018.

As part of Games with Gold, Xbox Live Gold members will be able to download "Tomb Raider: Underworld" and "Army of Two" for the Xbox One and Xbox 360 free throughout January 2018. The former will be released first and will be available until the usual mid-month games refresh and will be replaced by the latter on January 16.

Between the two games, "Army of Two" garnered more votes to be included in the library with over 13,000 votes; "Tomb Raider: Underworld" then followed with around 9,000 votes. Aside from the mentioned titles, "The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing III" will also be available from January 1 to 31 exclusively for the Xbox One, along with "Zombie" which will be available from January 16 to February 15.

In a report by Express UK, it is stated that Xbox Major Nelson of Xbox has confirmed the company no longer has announcements planned for the rest of 2017 as the team in charge of the project is taking a break over the holiday season. However, fans can still add new Xbox 360 titles including "Earth Defense Force 2017" and "Sonic Adventure 2" to their libraries through this month's Games with Gold. 

"After releasing 136 Xbox 360, 13 Original Xbox & 7 enhanced Xbox 360 titles in 2017, the Xbox One Backward Compatibility team is taking some time off for the holidays," Larry Hryb of Xbox confirmed. "Releases resume after New Year. Thank you for all of your support this year." 

Microsoft has announced that around 50% of Xbox One users have played an Xbox 360 game on their Xbox One consoles through its backward-compatibility feature which is equivalent to roughly 508 million hours of gaming, according to Mike Nichols, Microsoft's CMO for Gaming at Microsoft.