Achievements are how Microsoft is gonna edge in on Google

Maybe the points system will be “expanded” and tageted to techie.
Well…I’ll surely instruct my SPAM filter to not mark any message offeing bucks if “I use the beta version o the next email client” Microsoft releases!

Good spot Robert! It works perfectly as a microconcept to get gamers to proceed all the way through a game (Burnout and Gran Turismo spring to mind) but surely the end goal has got to be enough of an incentive for them to continue the points scoring?

Beating your friends is one thing, but for the whole thing to have a pinnacle is for me, critical.

I remember when the ngage came out, one major appeal was the intenrational league of points (for a game), but after a while the appeal soon wore off.

That said, achievable, tangible benefits appropriate to each MS product being used is a great idea!

Yes, indeedy! And this is in-line with a Gates comment earlier in the year about potentially ‘paying’ people to use Windows Live search; pay them via points which can be redeemed for goodies. My only concern is that Google can set up a similar points system themselves by partnering with Apple. With everybody using a points system, it no longer remains a differentiator. Wouldn’t you rather use Google and earn points than Yahoo and earn points if the value of these points are the same because Google search quality is better?

Having said that, you can see how this could become an ever-escalating ‘arms war’ where the value of points keep going up and up to lure users; the value only being limited by the ROI of converting a user.

I think you have to be consistent in the article with the terminology. Their are Achievements, which is what you are talking about, and their is the terrible sudo currency, MS Points, that is also embedded in the whole Xbox Live and Zune experience. MS Points are insidious, something only an accountant could love, but Achievements are addictive. MS could make Achievements even more addictive if you got free stuff on Xbox Live for get a certain number of Achievements.

I came here to post the same thing Dave did. You can’t call Achievements ‘points’ because ‘points’ are xbox currency. I still don’t understand why they use the confusing points. They should make it one to one to dollars, then they could call them Xbucks. I have 20 xbucks on my xbox. I like the sound of it.

I don’t have an XBox 360 (yet, that purchase is being planned), but can you give points or achievements person to person? Imagine if you could give points (maybe from a pool you’ve earned or bought) for people to subscribe to your RSS feed or to register for your site?

Scoble:

I usually think you have a lot of insight, but I have to disagree on this one.

I bought a 360 in December 2005 (paid extra to get it) and think it is an awesome system. I vaguely pay attention to my achievements score – mostly relative to other people in my friends list and especially people I actually really know outside of gaming.

But there is absolutely no way I would use Windows Live over Google, etc., to boost that score. I just don’t care that much about it.

Maybe there are some gamers out there who do, but with a total of roughly 10MM 360s sold, that subset of 360 owners is in no way big enough to give MSFT an “edge on Google.”

To me, the cool thing about earning an achievement is when you do it by doing something in a game – e.g. getting a certain number of kills in a multiplayer round, making it through a round without sustaining any damage, etc. I can’t imagine many people getting excited by earning achievements by sending Hotmail – I mean Windows Live Mail or whatever they’re calling it these days, etc.

There are a lot of great things about the 360 ecosystem, and I am sure many more to come, but I just don’t see this as being realistic.

Thanks for all of the great work you do. I enjoy your blog a ton.

H.

This would be a great move on Microsoft’s part. The would be able to use the momentum of one business area (the XBox, which is by no means a monopoly) to facilitate the usage of other areas of their business (windows Live).

Token Economies are great with Children. They’re used a lot in classrooms. I always thought playing video games was child-like (I am a huge gamer – BTW), and the use of points in the XBox 360 proves it..

Points or recognition based systems have been a popular way of getting people to share information or get involved in activities for a good while. Forums on the Web have used points and rankings for postings for a long time. Some people achieve a new title because of the number of posts submitted. TechRepublic used a points based system in its Q&A approach. All of this gives them a status and recognition in the community which is what Xbox Live points are all about.

Achievements are cool, especially with gamers as as they confirm or deny l33t status, just as having the best items and level in WoW shows how good you are (apart from those people that buy them).

What I wonder about is whether the achievements and points will be only a symbol of recognition or whether I will be able to use them for something like getting earlier access to Betas or other goodies.

MK: Achievements earn you GamerScore, not points. Microsoft has gone on record saying GamerScore will never buy you anything. They could go back on that, but it’s unlikely. There are already companies you can pay to earn you achievements and build your GamerScore, so this the system has already been gamed too much to put any sort of monetary value. As Robert said, it’s an addicting way of getting people to put an extra effort in.

However, Robert, I hope Microsoft never pushes achievements beyond games. That would completely invalidate the system and ruin it permanently. The achievements are a sign that you achieved something in a game. Given, most games have a few easy achievements. But they all have harder ones that require you to actually be good at the game. There’s no way to be “good” at using Microsoft products. When I see somebody who has 10,000+ GamerScore, I know that person is a mad man. If in the future, seeing 10,000+ means I found somebody who loaded up Microsoft Office 100 times or performed a bunch of searches online, the game’s over and Microsoft loses one of the things that made their console better than the competition.

The xbox is what made me a fan of Microsoft again. As someone who has used the 360 point system, I don’t think it’s really a significant draw. The points are the 21st century equivalent of those tickets that you used to get at arcades for playing speedball and the like. The virtual display case is lined with prizes for high achievers. But, as in the past, the prizes are just marketing gimmicks. For people that work for a living and don’t have time to spend their whole day racking up points, the only way to attain the prizes is to open up your wallet and buy them. The points only serve to entice.

When Xbox live launched in 2002, one of the first games available was Ghost Recon, a port of the original PC game. That game had a dossier system with 50 objectives that could be achieved in the single-player modes. Each objective unlocked an aspect of the multiplayer game (character, map, game type, or weapon) that made the experience more fun for the player and encouraged his team mates and adversaries to share the single player experience more vividly.

To date, none of the next generation games have utilized the point system in this manner. The application transfers to the non-game world, as you pointed out, but I don’t think that Microsoft really gets it.

For points for techies – see http://wikipedia.org/wiki/TopCoder

Robert, I don’t feel that the points system will be expanded outside of the Xbox Live system. The xbox team, I feel, likes to work in that closed environment.

I do agree that they are addictive, and actually makes me want to play older games to unlock them.

Wow that seems to be a very good idea. The more the competition increases between the search engines the better would be for the users.
It is always good to see that The Major competitors introduce creative ideas to increase their popularity instead of just getting involved in negative add campaigns.

Robert,
I do not have an Xbox, however, I have to disagree with you on this. Using a games points system to increase traffic to a site or use services will only work with the gamers and only when they are playing the games. This may increase Microsoft’s exposure but only for a short period.
The business world is what is going make or break to big software companies, if you can get a company a more secure, faster, cheaper way to run it’s business and manipulate business intellegence, then you are going to win.
This idea for gam points is great idea, but only for gamers.

Guy

Devaluing the “scoring” system in the Xbox world would be a mistake.

what about the economics of ‘points supply’?
isn’t this just going to lead to hyper inflation of ms points?
won’t they ultimately lose value?

You’re kidding yourself. Achievements are not going to be enough of a draw to dent Google at all.

There are 10 million Xbox 360 users out there and giving the 360′s growth curve (which has actually been disappointing given it’s head start), it’s unlikely Achievements would make much of a dent at all.

Although I do have to say, I think Xbox Live is the single best platform Microsoft has ever put together. It certainly far surpasses Windows.

Microsoft’s ASP.NET community launched a recognition system a month ago and the effect has been greater participation in site activity (with quality, not just quantity).

http://www.asp.net/resources/community-recognition/default.aspx

Microsoft already started the point reward on http://forums.asp.net and yes I am trying to get as many point as I can, I got one more level for the top level!!!

The points system has already been expanded beyond Xbox Live with the Zune Market place.

I don’t think many Internet users would be interested in a Microsoft points system. I can see how such a system would get *some* attention, but most people really wouldn’t care much; and hardly anyone would care enough to change their behaviour i.e. stop using Google.

If Microsoft wants people to stop using Google, and start using Live, then MS needs to make their search systems find stuff significant better than Google does. There’s loads of ways they could do this – but they just seem to completely lack the ability to deliver anything but mostly inferior copies of what Google is delivering.

I’m actually quite surprised at how badly MS is doing. Google has left quite a lot of low-hanging fruit on the search tree – in text search, and image search (and video search). Low-hanging fruit that really could make people think about switching.

This stuff really shouldn’t be that hard for a company in Microsoft’s position. That real barrier to entry in this stuff is computer hardware and bandwidth, so most start-ups can’t compete because of cash constraints. That’s not an issue for Microsoft.

Actually, I’m more than surprised at MS. I’m embarrassed for them. I mean – not only is there low-hanging fruit in the search space itself, but MS owns the most popular damn browser on the planet. And if you own the browser, then there’s some truly *amazing* things you could do with search. By amazing – I mean things that could totally blow Google away.

Ho hum… never mind. Not my problem… as they say!

And if you don’t have an XBox 360 or use Windows?

Microsoft should keep the achievements tied to revenue, Robert, otherwise it diminshes their value. Right now you can’t earn achievments without a friend bringing the game over, buying or renting the games.

The bigger story and threat to eBay (PayPal) and Google (Checkout and Adsense) here is using Microsoft Points ($$) as a micropayment system outside the Live Marketplace, interfacing with Adcenter, and letting affiliates shave pennies promoting content in the Live Marketplace.

Imagine bloggers being able to run contextual AdCenter ads for Live content and make part of the sale from referred sales?

This is what Google needs to be most concerned about and I think that will happen someday. The achievement score thing is a nice sideshow attraction, but it’s not a direct revenue producer if anybody can earn them by doing stuff on the web for free (like searches).

Seems better to have them be tied to buying a product or service, like they are now.

To avoid getting too lengthy here, I’ll continue these thoughts in a post and link back in.