Achievements are how Microsoft is gonna edge in on Google

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.

If points can be ‘achieved’ by something trivial as 10 searches on Live which any dufus could do. Then it wouldn’t be an achievement anymore, would it?

Competitions are only fun when you win sometimes (or atleast you have a hope to win). With something like points. Only the top few would be can be kept interested.

And hey what happens to the baby who gets born on 2020? Would he have to compete with someone born 40 years before him?

Simon:

I think Microsoft struggles to do this because of its perception in the market – and the fact that people have to pay for their main suite of products. (Ironically, there isn’t much you can do with writely though that you can’t do with pre-loaded MS Works!). Google is fantastic at using its name to push (often entirely search un-related) products but if they weren’t so good people just wouldn’t use them.

I agree with you though in the opportunities that the browser hold for MS. In the same way that Google search by its very dominance and name, bred related (and unrelated) Google products, so should MS browser attempt to do the same.

Integration of basic word, excel, powerpoint etc. into the browser are easy to achieve…but then again what would the competition commissions have to say about integration of such tools into their browser?

Maybe the fact that they would be online resources (accessed via the browser) would ensure they escape the bundling problems the media player encountered.

The unrelated browser-product field is a different kettle of fish. As Firefox 2.0 shows, the browser as we know it has come as far as it can go. Even Flock isn’t massively radical. I think that if MS are to use the browser to launch un-related browser products, they need to re-evaluate how the browser is used.

Robert, I had no idea you were a 360 fan. Send me your gamertag and we’ll play sometime!

Can’t wait for the Zephyr…Xbox 360 Part 2.

You “earned an achievement?” Do you know how unbelievably asinine that sounds?

I love geek gadgets far more than most, but please, can we have grown men act like it. My kids earn neopoints on neopets.com, and they’re really happy that they’ve got 90+ thousand of them. I never would have thought that adults would get sucked into the same marketing/ego/nonsense vortex.

I hate this “adultescent” stuff.

Veronica: my gamertag is “Scobleizer.”

John: you ever fly on an airline? You ever hear of “frequent flier miles or points?”

Same thing.

Marketers have been doing this to us for years.

“Microsoft is gonna edge ?”

Are you talking about that company that has to buy their way through techmeme sponsorship just to “be part of the conversation”?

Take a look at MSDN blogs : so many blogs, and yet virtually no comment anywhere.

Give me a break, Scoble.

I understand you are willing to save an endangered specy though.

Stephane: that’s funny. A few months back people were complaining that all they were seeing on TechMeme was me.

As someone who actually does care about his gamerscore somewhat, I can tell you that doing this would absolutely destroy the credibility of the system. It would become, erm, pointless.

And as to what ‘caring’ about my gamerscore means, basically, it tends to make me play 360 games instead of the games I have on other systems.

Hmmm. A search with NO results? Try:

“Reality is rarely relevant” (Google = 0, Live = 0)

Which makes sense, since “It is perceptions that count…”

bob wyman

@33 Actually, as the majority of your commenters have pointed out: No, it’s not. Unlike frequent flyer miles, Xbox achievments have no currency value.

@29. Paul – I was actually meaning *only* search-engine (and context-depend ad) innovation in my comment (#24).

I wasn’t talking about the other stuff like on-line office applications etc. The main opposition to MS Office – Google office apps, and OpenOffice – hasn’t united to create a single offering. *Big* mistake. Both of those are pretty shoddy offerings, in comparison to Office 2007. MS will continue to whip their asses in the office app game.

No, if you want to stop people going to Google, a points system is going to be in the noise. What you need to do is make your search engine significantly better than Google’s. Remember AltaVista? Everyone used to use that. They thought it was an amazing search engine. What could be better than that? Then Google came along. It was a step change. And everybody switched.

John: you ever fly on an airline? You ever hear of “frequent flier miles or points?”

Marketers have been doing this to us for years.

And those are probably even less useful unless you’re a serious flyer. I fly 2-3 times a year, the frequent flyer miles expire before I can ever use them.

If you’re a fan, they’re great, but if you aren’t deeply in the XBox/Zune world, they’re rather useless. Acquiring points you can’t use makes them have no value. Of course, considering how Microsoft obfuscates the point-money relationship in the Zune store, that’s probably what they’re gambling on.

@41 – edge culture and self promotion at its best. Just because you think something, doesn’t mean your idea is statistically or practically representative. I know Scoble reckons you are a cool guy but that doesn’t equate to meaning your opinions are of any interest outside of your buddy circle. e.g. you fly twice a year, so that makes you authoritative on the relevance of air miles?

@ original post – Pirillo needs to get a life. seriously. he has a wife to take care of, surely…

As far as I can tell, these achievements have no real value. While most gamers like to see where they are in relation to other gamers, how does that translate to doing something as mundane as search? Like many of your posts, I just don’t seem to understand what you are driving at. Do you think gamers are going to respect people for searching the internet?

The only way that points would matter is if they had real value. The problem then is that it is trivial to “game” the system. I could easily write a plug-in for Firefox that takes any Google search and duplicates it for MS search in a separate tab that I don’t actually look at.

Yawn… Robert, I hope Google does get usurped in the next couple of years, but this article is somewhat reaching… Poster #45 hit the nail on the head, IMO.

For some reason, all this reminds me of Blade Runner. Robert, I still think we’ll all see you blogging for the Tyrell Corporation while all while, all this personal information will allow the government to blog us. There goes any hope of privacy and what little anonymity we currently enjoy.

I don’t care what Scott McNealy (former Sun CEO) said about “get over your privacy — you don’t have any…” I so disagree with that.

Robert, I think you are absolutely right. But the winner won’t be Microsoft alone, it will also be the public — the search users! (Assuming Microsoft or Yahoo plan to give substantial portion back)

I thin you love your 60inch Sony HD TV. How much did you pay for it? How much would you pay for it today? I am sure much less. Why? Because the companies always want to in an arm race to beat each other prices.

Google does not want to do that. That is an anti-thesis of a capital economy. It is not the search which makes Google $150 Billion company. It is the business model which is broken. Instead of Google being in the arm race to beat each other prices, it puts its consumers in the arm race to beat each other bids! Wonderful for Google but evil for public. Each search public do on Google, the public pay 10 cents to 20 cents to Google (estimated). Obviously it does not cost this much to Google to serve each search. Any other business model would put Google in the realm of normal competitive market and it would then keep marginally higher than what it costs.

Now look at the comment number 5 on this post. This comment actually nails the market dynamism. Microsoft rewrads users, then Yahoo rewards and then Google does. Finally users would see big bucks. It would be easily possible to give back few dollars every month to a search user, therefore Google starts competing. The main problem is the comment number 45. It is easy to game the system.

Does this mean that both Zune owners will benefit? – Tim

As I’ve had problems with two Xbox 360 units I’ve had, I am largely skeptical just yet about the value of points/achievements. In addition, points without a true value really don’t mean anything to me personally.

“John: you ever fly on an airline? You ever hear of “frequent flier miles or points?”

Same thing.

Marketers have been doing this to us for years.”

I am not aware of anything that I can truly trade for of value using the Xbox 360. Am I missing something? I can trade my miles for flights on the airlines…

Note: I am actually a fan of your blog. I just don’t see how the mentioned item(s) will really change anything for MS.

Reading this again, I find the whole idea rather stupid. It’s a temporary gain at best — grasping at straws.

What are any of these companies really hoping to achieve?

Microsoft is an OS/apps company. That is their bread and butter.

Google is a once-good search engine company turned into a marketing/advertising compamy.

Yahoo is the only company out there that has any hope of turning itself into a real, pervasive media company. I can see Yahoo becoming a TV network one day. I can see them as THE bridging portal from offline to online life. I just cannot see MS or Google ever being anything other than what they are. MS has had some success with its Xbox, but I cannot see them ever trumping Nintendo or Sony.

I want to see a company do one thing and do it well, not try to be all things to all people.

Look at traditional Italian pizza places. The real places, not those that call themselves “traditional” places. They make and sell ONLY pizza. Not calzones, not deep dish pizza, not salads, JUST tradtional pizza. The few places that do this make a killing. If a search company just did search and nothing else, they would make a killing. Forget the ads, forget the marketing. Just do search and do it better than all others. Sell search devices. Consult on data mining and search. I want to see just a search company. The closest we have to this is Ask.com, unfortunately.

Dazla…the thing is…this points scam is just like rebates. If the rebate usage rate were to approach 100%, you’d never see another rebate in your life. Rebates are a great way to not lower a price, but make people think they COULD get it for cheaper. The truth is, most people don’t bother, the hoops are too annoying. If they can give you a rebate, why not just chop the price by the rebate amount?

Because then everyone gets it at a reduced cost instead of the motivated cheap bastiges

Same thing with the points. Microsoft knows that the usage rate on that crap will NEVER hit 100%, so they can reap great PR while doing no real work.

But then again, no one ever got poor gambling on the laziness or stupidity of the US Consumer.

i think Microsoft is an excellent company.

Keith Knutsson