Highlighting Players That Don’t Play Lots of Games on Xbox
Since the dawn of time, Xbox’s achievement system has benefitted gamers who play a large number of games. Gamerscore is earned by completing various objectives in games, usually capping at 1000G. But now, Microsoft appears to be rethinking Xbox achievements, according to a recent podcast with Windows Central.
Xbox executive Mike Ybarra has teased the news, mentioning that the team are looking to highlight players that play only a few games but play them a lot, or who play it professionally. Typically, a pro eSports player doesn’t benefit from having a high gamerscore because they usually have earned them all but can’t proceed to a new game.
Ybarra went on to explain why his team is planning on reworking it:
“[W]e can do a lot more to reflect and let people show their gaming history and their status. 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. All the way to people [with over a million gamerscore]. It’s that range that we really need to look at and celebrate … we’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.”
In the podcast, Ybarra clarifies that this would not replace the current gamerscore model but rather complement it. It’s interesting to think about what Microsoft plans to do. Recognizing hardcore players that play a specific game for long periods sounds long overdue. Even for players that don’t play professionally, there are now more games that expect a longer time commitment like Destiny and Overwatch.
Expect COGConnected to have the latest details up as soon as we have them. In the mean time, tell us what you think about these changes down below in the comments.