Xbox Achievements are a staple of Xbox LIVE. It shows some of the things you've had to endure to get some sweet gamerscore and just how dedicated you are to some games. It's pretty satisfying to hear that bloop sound after beating a game or grinding out tons of time on a tedious achievement. The feature introduced on Xbox 360 has remained mostly the same for the last decade with some little tweaks here and there but Microsoft is working on some "fundamental changes" so that all gamers can have something to be proud of, not just achievement hunters.
"[W]e are working towards a bigger, more meaningful change about somebody's gaming accomplishments in history, as a gamer on Xbox," said Xbox vice president Mike Ybarra.
Ybarra explained that it won't just be about playing tons of games to get a high gamerscore to show how much of a gamer you are if you only dedicate yourself to a few games that will be reflected.
"[W]e can do a lot more to reflect and let people show their gaming history and their status," he explained. "Whether it's somebody who only plays multiplayer in Halo 5 at a professional level, maybe they only have 2,000 Gamerscore, you want to be able to celebrate that person. You want people to be in the know. This person doesn't play a lot of games, but they're world top ten at Halo 5.
"[W]e're going to go big in the area of letting people show off and represent their gaming history and the type of gamer that they are, far more than we do with Gamerscore," Ybarra said.
Ybarra stressed that this won't replace gamerscore but it will "complement" it. It's interesting to see Xbox refining this system but it makes sense. PlayStation took inspiration from them during the PlayStation 3 era when they added trophies and now Microsoft wants to take it even further.
It's unclear when this is coming but we may hear more about it during Gamescom later this month. A brand new Xbox One system update is on the way as well and is currently in testing, it'll introduce a new dashboard and guide system that is similar to the Xbox 360. You can click here for more details.
