XBLA Achievement Structure Change

Mr E

Some changes are coming down the line for XBLA gamer score.

At the moment, the rules for XBLA games are:

Base: 200 Gamerscore / Max of 20 Achievements
DLC: Up to 50 Gamerscore + 5 Achievements per Quarter (3 Max)
Total: Up to 350 Gamerscore / 35 Achievements

In the near future, it looks like they'll be changing to:

Base: 400 Gamerscore / Max of 30 Achievements
DLC: Up to 100 Gamerscore + 8 Achievements per Quarter (4 Max)
Total: Up to 800 Gamerscore / 62 Achievements

More gamerscore is always a good thing, but allowing for more achievements means that developers can be more creative with their achievements. If DLC has more gamerscore attached, people might be more inclined to buy it too....

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/news-2563-XBLA-Achievement-Policy-Change-Coming-Soon.html

Adamcp898

Yeah it's a good thing in terms of the fact that the actual long, well thought out arcade games now won't have 15 painfully boring achievements, however there'll be just as much short ones now that achievement hunters will complain about each other having because they're an 'easy 400'.

Mr E

Looks like it's official.

New games from April onwards have the option of having 400 points.
New games from June onwards must have 400 points.

http://majornelson.com/2012/03/12/xbox-live-arcade-gamerscore-policy-change/

calex71

As a self confessed cheevo whore this is good news. Not for score but the amount of games with boring or basic achievements was silly. There were loads of games they could have gotten creative with in terms of achievements.

They could leave the score alone for all I care, but the upping of the nuber of achievements is great.

Sabre0001

I'm feeling the opposite in terms of creativity. I think many will be a matter of grinding similar to retail games rather than the exceptional Geometry Wars 2. Hopefully developers make the move interesting though.

Not pushed on achievements, but I like when one's are put in that are creative or an actual achievement rather than simply progression, luck or grinding.

Orim

I agree with Sabre. I can't see how how more achievements is going to encourage more creativity. In fact I can't think of any games that hit the 20 max that is there at the moment so the increase means next to nothing.

I would say that the score increase will make more of a difference as those few developers that put some effort into the achievements might've been worried about diluting the score too much with only 200 to play with.