Are Xbox Achievements That Important?

[bobsentell]

I've read over and over again how the XBOX division is "evaluating" Windows Phone. My grossly inadaquet understanding is all games requiring XBOX achievements must be approved by XBOX. The idea is to prevent Gamerscore farming by submitting a game like Angry Birds that gives you Gamerscore for every pig you kill.

But WP8 is sucking wind in marketshare. Should we really be so stringent about those achievements?

Nokia just released two XBOX-free games today. Both are now on my phone and I've messed with both with little regard of how it will effect my status on Raptr. Most people who play games on iOS probably don't care either.

Shouldn't Microsoft be inviting everyone to post their games without the need to link it XBOX Live? I'm pretty sure once marketshare increases and companies start seeing real revenue from those games, they'll submit an XBOX version of that game.

But for now, let them port whatever they want over. We have plenty to rack up on Gamerscore elsewhere.

 

[Keith Wallace]

I'll agree that getting playable games out there is priority #1, but Gamerscore does matter, in a sense. It offers a gaming feature (tracking your Gamerscore with your Xbox LIVE gamertag) that is unique to the platform; iOS and Android do not have Xbox LIVE integration on that level. It also adds a level of replayability to games that I fully admit has made some games last longer for me than usual;. For example, I just finished the Achievements on Shuffle Party a couple of days ago. I had already beaten the challenges, but I decided to also grind out a few more rounds of Shuffleboard and Bowling and replay some Challenges to buy everything in the Pro Shop for my last Achievement. It just adds some purpose to playing games that are repetitive.

Even with a non-Xbox title, Sumuray, I have found myself playing one or two extra games to hit an achievement (they're not Xbox LIVE ones, just game-specific achievements). Like I played an extra game to hit the 3,000-point mark a couple of days ago, just because it was a simple target.

This goes for Xbox games as well. I recently went back and did some work on older Madden and NBA 2K titles to get some Achievements that I knew would be easy to get. I am doing this with a few MLB 2K games now as well (and to tide me over until MLB 2K13 releases in March).

 

[TonyDedrick]

That's my issue with achievements. They feel like cheap ways to get you to to keep the games, grinding out ridiculous task in rather than creating organic experiences from the start.

 

[SnailUK]

The problems is that achievements were ridiculously easy at first. You could get every achievement for an xbox game in one play through. Nice for casual gamers, but hardly any merit to a more hardened gamer..

These days a lot of work goes into making them more valuable, so a casual gamer can get a nice chunk, but getting them all takes time.

You open achievements up to everyone, and they lose their appeal if people start going back to stupidly easy achievements.
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