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Achievements Driving Game Sales - Microsoft
Stephen Toulouse, who heads up Xbox Live policy at Microsoft’s Live Services Group, has said that achievements help drive game sales.
"It's been statistically shown that games that have achievements and implement them well sell better," he stated in Major Nelson’s podcast.
A 2007 study by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR) backs up Toulouse’s claims.
Focusing on the Xbox 360 achievement system and the impact it has on review scores, sales and profitability, “the results showed a strong connection between a game title’s diversity of accomplishment types with that game’s profitability – pointing to the idea that the more diverse the accomplishments available to the user, the more enjoyable the game, higher review scores, more units sold.”
EEDAR also found that titles that incorporate online elements into their achievements generate 50 percent more money than those that don’t.
During Major Nelson’s podcast Toulouse also outlined Microsoft’s latest strategies for tackling cheating on Xbox Live.
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I think the bottom line is: achievements are there available for people who think it is nice to gain points and compare their performances with other players who think alike.
If you think it's just plain stupid, just play the games and don't mind about achievements.
Just like someone said earlier: achievements are like when you played pac-man, trying to get the highest score. It's cool if you give a damn...
I think a lot of people are missing the point here. I don't disagree that people care about achievements. Microsoft's trying to spin achievements as something that drives sales. As in a game with good achievements will sell a lot better than the same game with worse achievements, which is hard to prove but likely isn't true. Game sales are driven by good marketing and more importantly good development. The latter of those two often leads to good achievements as the developers put time and thought into the game and its achievements.
Everyone talking about achievements being a waste of time or the fact that they care about achievements are completely going off the main topic here. That's not really the issue. It's obvious people like achievements, else why would Blizzard and Valve start including them in their systems? The question is whether or not they actually drive sales, which I'm pretty doubtful of.
I think you make a good point Brendon, when it comes to the top tier of games not many are gonna care even what the acheievements are in say gears of war 2 let alone buy the game because of them.
However I think their are other tiers in game retail (in the UK at least) that can be influenced by the prospect of achievements. It seems after a certain time on the shelf a number of games see drastic price reductions and its not just 1 or 2 of them either.
I identified this game at this price some time ago,
http://www.game.co.uk/Xbox360/Action/~r326888/John-Woo-Presents-Strangle...
Now before all the nelson muntz ps3 fanatics jump all over me saying "stranglehold? HA HA"
It didnt get the best review scores, it didnt get the worst, its in what I see as a middle ground of game retail. This along with 5 or 6 others in this 'middle ground' I will be purchasing at some point and the main factors for buying will be the addition to my game library, which I never trade in or buy pre owned and yes....achievements.
This extremely low price is also of course the only reason im even looking at mediocrity and it may well be a UK/EU only kind of thing because I was in america very recently and I noticed 2 things, US new condition games dont seem to move an inch from what they started at and also their didnt seem to be a great deal of highstreet competition to Gamestop.
I think 360 achievements can have some influence in some purchases, but I do find some of the claims in this paticular article somewhat far-fetched.
now am I just "a mental and talking gobshite"? Possibly.
Did we go right off track on this topic? Definatly.
Wouldn't be the edge comments section if it didnt :)
Good point Brendon. My opinion on the matter is that they may have a slight fraction of impact on sales at best. I like them, but very rarely has achievements had an impact on my decision to buy a game. Achievements have though impacted how long I hold onto a game which could be argued affects sales in a positive way since there's less used copies at least for a longer period of time since people aren't trading in their games as quickly. Would people holding onto their games longer before trading them in make enough of an impact to create enough of a lack of used copies to where someone is forced to buy new because there just aren't any used copies on the shelf? I doubt it, but if so, it would be such a small amount IMO that it really doesn't affect sales enough to be considered "driving game sales".
If anything a more accurate statement would be, "Marginally and temporarily effecting total available used copies possibly reducing used game purchases by a fraction of a percentage". Not exactly attention grabbing news eh?
I don't think the allure of achievements to most should be ignored (as it clearly hasn't by some major players out there like the aforementioned Valve or even ActivisionBlizzard) but to say it's driving game sales? Even I can admit that's a bit of a stretch.
Definately not.
For one thing, well implemented achievements make you play a game longer and keep copies off the used market. Whether or not people want to believe it, it does help big time. I doubt it's 50% more because of achievements, but it's absolutely a purchase factor
And trophies are just lame, the reason why they fail is the lack of the cumulative score. This doesn't drive the consumer to get them to increase penis size.
Why does a cumulative gamerscore matter? I think more people would rather care more about achievements within a specific game to be a completionist. Look at Valve's achievements. They are fairly popular yet there's no cumulative score. I think people are too stuck in this Microsoft point of view where what they do is the right way to do it. That's silly.
I don't really care about the actual gamerscore. I'm more concerned about the amount of achievements I get from a title, because well implemented achievements will mean I'm playing the game in as many ways as I can.
For that reason, trophies are actually very well designed. The Platinum trophy is what you are shooting for.
Having said that though, I'm 2 achievements off Smackdown 09 because I'm upping my characters stats, for which there is no achievement, rather than getting the Gold Rush and 5 Hall of Famers achievements which would see me 1000 point it.
So I look more towards my achievement percentage (33.58% for anyone who might be interested) than the ever increasing gamerscore.
I hate Achievements & Trophies. They take you out of the experience when playing a game (particularly atmospheric games) due to the pop-up nature of the silly things.
From a personal standpoint, not being a 360/PS3 owner, the only interaction i've had with achievements is my Wiiware version of Mega Man 9. When i looked through the list, I had no interest in "achieving" any of that. I found most of them to be quite silly in fact. Unless this is an unrealstic representation of what most achievements are, I can't see these being appealing to anyone outside the uber-competitive gamer.
With that in mind, well implemented achievements are probably a part of a well implemented game, so this fact kinda goes without saying. It would be like saying games with well implemented gameplay and graphics statistically sell better. Naturally they would, as these are factors that help makeup a good game just like, I assume, achievments are also a factor. It's just another piece of the "good game therefore good sales" puzzle that gamers crave.
Mega Man 9's achievements are probably a bad example. Most Japanese developed games somewhat miss what's fun about achievements, where the bulk of the achievements are "Do A, X amount of times" with a sprinkling of crazy hard criteria (I believe there was a MM9 achievement for finishing the game in one life, or something like that).
Well done achievements most definitely extend the playtime with a game you enjoy. The key to those achievements is giving you the nudge to do things or play a certain way, which you wouldn't have thought of doing, and that experience being fun. The bulk of the games I've played this year have been games which came out last holiday season (as well as revisiting Mass Effect, which I got when it came out in 2007), they're all good games I've enjoyed, but what's put me over the top, was getting some points I hadn't got.
Now, as for MS' claim about sales, I really don't buy it. The only scenario I can see Achievements having any significant influence when deciding to buy games, is if someone has a 360 and a PS3, and they're trying to decide what version of a multiplatform game to get, and then it only effects people who have invested a lot of time in their gamerscore.
If they said the rental market is effected by good achievements, I would believe that, since hardcore achievement whores will rent a lot of games, even a good amount of not so great games, for the points.
My personal mentality with achievements, is the game being good and enjoyable is the most important, and if I like a game I'll probably end up spending time getting the non-obvious achievements.
Until you've played a few games with achievements (and on your own account), it's hard to pass judgement, I didn't think I'd be into them, but they are addictive, and they're a great record of accomplishment and gameplay habits, which anyone who knows your gamertag can look at.
I think you and Bickle both got it right in my opinion. Some games have silly achievements that are such a distraction from what you'd normally be doing in the game that you really have to take yourself out of the game and focus just on that achievement. Achievements attached to difficulty levels for me just add a bit more incentive to try to plow through the game on a difficulty I may not have otherwise tried but if they're only going to award me with 50 points then it's not worth it.
I agree with Bickle that achievements make you hold onto your games a while longer because of achievements. I still have Too Human, Mass Effect, and a couple other games that I still have a few achievements to unlock and those achievements you'll earn through just playing the game with certain characters in your party. Of course those achievements wouldn't be worth it if the games weren't already fun on their own.
You're right Ozzman, achievements are just one factor in many and without them a good game would of course still be good, but a bad game with achievements is still a bad game even if the achievements are well-implemented.
Achievements/Trophies are a complete waste of time. Plus i don't believe the PR bullshit MS is spinning here.
Consumers buy games because of the game itself, not because it has Achievements/Trophies tacked on.
Anyway, anyone over the age of 18 hasn't got the time to give a shit about such a component.
Maybe i'd care about Achievements/Trophies if one got discounts off titles, free PSN/XBLA games/DLC, PSN credit/MS Points or other goods for my hardwork in getting all Achievements/Trophies within a game.
Until then, Achievements/Trophies will remain a irrelevent part of gaming for me.
I'm 28 and have very little time away from my family and I care about achievements. A lot of people I know (and almost everyone one of them are over 18) care about achievements. And it's not about getting stuff in return; it's not even really about high scores all that much but it's more of a representation of you, what types of games you like, and how you play. Barla it seems you just have a very limited understanding of the purpose of achievements. I can't speak on Trophies though as I don't own a PS3, but I've heard there's no good way to compare your's with others (you can look at their's, but no way through PC or PS3 to compare them side by side which is one of the bigger draws of achievements).
I have no problem Barla with you not caring for achievements; just don't say something naïve like people over 18 don't care about them as a lot of people over 18 do. I'm not saying they're in love with them or obsess over them, but that doesn't mean they don't give a shit either. There's a middle ground that most people fall into where they don't play just for achievements but getting them through normal play is still enjoyable.
Exactly, Nick. I think too many people fail to see how MS' introduction of achievements as a system-wide standard has had an evolutionary change on gaming. Some people simply see it as bragging rights for whoever has the highest score while others, like myself, use it as a tool to identify gamers with similar play styles/skills and to gain replay value by trying things we otherwise would not have bothered with if it wasn't brought to our attention as an achievement.
Because of the robust API's MS offered since launch, there are a plethora of websites (such as 360voice.com) which help gamers find others with the same achievements, games played, whether achievements are earned single-player or on-line, etc. as well as the tools available directly on MS' xbox website. You can even get down to the level of seeing how many days you've played a particular game, when you last played it and how many consecutive days you've been online.
Trophies are pretty useless since there is a backlog of titles that don't support it, the guidelines are not firm and Sony lacks the software expertise to offer API's so others can incorporate this into their websites. Many websites, like Giantbomb.com, Gamespot, etc. take advantage of the MS API's so you can include your Gamertag/Achievements in your signature and/or profile.
Achievements are about much more than just points. I personally don't care about how many points I have, but achievements have changed how I play games because I'll scan the list of available achievements, and when they are designed well, it well tempt me to play the game in a way I might not otherwise have tried (finding easter eggs, etc.). Oh, and I am well over 18 years old (43 to be precise).
Barla it seems you just have a very limited understanding of the purpose of achievements.
What because i'm not like you and spend crazy hours into upping a pointless gamerscore!?
I like playing games, but i'm not going to waste my time on pointless achievements/trophies.
Like i said:
Maybe i'd care about Achievements/Trophies if one got discounts off titles, free PSN/XBLA games/DLC, PSN credit/MS Points or other goods for my hardwork in getting all Achievements/Trophies within a game.
Until then, Achievements/Trophies will remain a irrelevent part of gaming for me.
I agree with NIckgamertagO1, you kind of miss the point of the achievements, you don't have to look at them or care but its a kind of a plus (however small might be its a plus) and I know lots of friends married with families and lives outside of gaming that like the achievement system, none crazy about them but definitely find them a plus to their overall gaming experience.
To me its a cool extra cause it keeps a track of all the games you played how much you enjoyed it, and overall shows you how much you got out of your console experience. Like I said before nothing spectacular but a nice addition and not really a PR move the correlation of sales and achievements. Think about it, if it was Sony would not have wasted their resources both money and time to implement something similar like trophies.
Personal preferences aside no once can deny they're really a great marketing/selling tool.
Never mind, not worth it.
So, do you get any personal sense of satisfaction for making these achievements? Or is it really just for showing off/bragging rights to other people in your network?
No Ozzman, as I said before and so has 1 or 2 other people is that it's a detailed description of your gaming history. You meet someone online, say you play with them in Halo, Guitar Hero, or CoD and they're pretty good at the game or just a cool person in general you can click on their gamertag it gives you multiple options at that point. Compare games, send friend request, view bio, etc. it's like a facebook or MySpace profile. Comparing games brings up every game they've played in the order they played it and places their achievement total per game next to the picture of the game. Next to that is your achievement total for that game or -- if you're never played the game. You can scroll through their entire play history to the very first game they've played while on Xbox live. You get a snapshot of their entire play history and you can learn instantly what types of games they play, if they have similar tastes as you do, and how much of each game they complete. It's just one more description of their personality just like a bio on facebook or MySpace. It can be viewed as bragging, but someone has to click on your profile and intentionally compare games to see it, so they have to want to see it. If they're at that point, then they are obviously interested enough in your gaming history to care.
I have to admit, I used to think of it as bragging rights, but the longer I've been on Xbox live the less it has become about bragging and the more it has become about showing your personality in more ways than a 500 word bio can. Once I saw some of my friends rent every movie license game or kiddie game just to boost their total it kind of turned me off to total gamerscore. I just now use it to see what type of gamer people are and what kind of tastes and play styles they have.
Ah, so it's more of an informational tool. I get ya. Thanks for clearing it up.
For me, exactly.
Nor is the Achievements/Trophies! lol
everytime you write a comment regarding 360 acheivements it becomes even clearer to 360 players that you dont understand them. Im not trying to insult you with that, as tho you cant understand a simple "achievement" reward mechanic. Their should also be a very clear distinction between acheivements and trophies. Trophies were not mandatory from the start whereas the 360 achievements are available on every single game released. Id argue they are pointless on ps3 with such shoddy implementation, taking into account players that iced all the trophy requirements in games that didnt have them.
This comment alone, acheivements/trophies are not worth it. You get a good number of the achievements doing things in the game you would normally do anyway.
You're not making any sense! Some 360/PS3 games have the same challenges in order to get acheivements and trophies.
So when you argue the PS3 trophies are pointless, but the same game on the 360 (with the same challenges) isn't pointless.
I think you're talking gob shite here mate!
Either that... or you're just a mental.
Don't kid yourself Miles, achievements/trophies are the same difference.
Why are you trying to distinguish one from the other? They both serve the same purpose!
i disagree, if I look at a friends 360 profile I can see every game he has played and how he fared in those games compared to myself. If I look at somebodys ps3 profile their could be games he has played but gets no credit for as they dont all have trophies? unless im wrong about that.
Miles I don't think there is a way to compare trophies with your friend's side-by-side as you can on the 360 and there is no way to do it on the PC like you can through xbox.com for achievements. You can look at their total I believe, but not compare. As far as trophies/achievements being the same as those other kids were saying, they are similar, but fundamentally different (and not all cross-platform games share the same achievement/trophies). With trophies, you get the platinum medal for getting ALL the trophies per game and you get a total of silver/gold/platinum you can view per game instead of what each individual trophy represents, with achievements you get credit for each achievement only and there is no bonus for getting all per game. Admittedly, I only have about 10 games or so that I've maxed out the achievements due to it being rather difficult. If someone were to have many platinum trophies I would take my hat off to them, cause that'd be difficult (and should be considered equally as lame as bragging about achievements/gamerscore).
Bottom line; achievements and trophies are similar in theory, but in implementation and execution they are very different.
(this is my understanding of trophies, I could be wrong as it was a while ago I read an article detailing the differences between the two).
cool thanks for clearing that up Nick, seems they are even lamer than I gave them credit for and goes some way to explaning the usual ps3 names on here just not getting achievements. Grats on the 10 games 1K'd Ive only maxed 2 myself, Assassins creed and hitman blood money.
Thanks. The games I can think of off the top of my head that' I've 1k'd are Halo 3 (1525), Cod2, CoD4, Oblivion (1250), Fight Night round 3, King Kong, Avatar (I know, I know), NBA 2k 2006 and 2007 (I know again), and a few others I can't think of right now. I couldn't get into Assassin's Creed and never played hitman, good games?
I know we are the same person and everything, but you should shoot me a friend request to O1 (the letter O followed by the number 1). (you too Grognard).
Owning both systems I can say that I couldn't give a fudge about either achievements or trophies. I wish you could turn the buggers off as they bloody annoy me.
Well i agree with Nick, pretty much sums up my own feelings regarding the 360 achievement points & also totally agree about the poorly implemented trophies on the PS3. (I own both systems)
Talking of driving sales i know a gamer at work who also owns both systems and he will generally buy the 360 version of a game over the PS3 version purely down to the 360 achievement points. Oh and he's in his late 30s.
For everything you can do on this planet, whether it's eating your own poo, touching kids or becoming a clown, there is going to be at least one person into that. So of course there are some people that care about achievements but achievements do not make or break a game.
Does anyone honestly think Halo 2 would have done worse if MS didn't include achievements?
I think people are going to realise that achievements suck and they'll go away.
At least with high scores they were just a measurement of how well you played the game. Achievements aren't like that. Developers often just invent stupid things for you to do that detract from playing the game properly.
For instance in team fortress 2 you have this: Konspicuous Konsumption - Eat 100 sandviches.
That does nothing to prove you're a good player. It's just made up for the sake of having achievements and it does detract from the game when you start getting idiots standing around in their base eating sandwiches just to boost their achievements.
That is why achievements need to do away.
I think you meant to say Halo 3.
Ok, some achievements suck, I'll give you that. If poorly implemented I would say those ones in particular do. Or ones that require too much work. But there are some really clever achievements out there that are a blast to try to get that don't stray much from what you're already doing in the game. I don't know anyone who has actually played their 360, played games the way they wanted to, naturally earned achievements and thought they sucked. It's just some recognition/reward for something you were doing anyway, why would that suck whether you're into it or not?
Multiplayer achievements do suck, I think they should all for the most part be either single player or coop, but having them in multiplayer is going to negatively affect other people's experience since they're playing with someone who's just trying to get headshots the whole time or deaths from the grave while the team suffers.
Achievements aren't going away any time soon, Sony has embraced them also and developers for the most part seem to like them as they get pretty creative with the achievements and the names tend to be some sort of inside joke between the developers and the players. CoD4 had some of the most hilariously-named achievements. I think deep and hard was one of them (a supposed accidental innuendo made at E3 by some Infinity Ward guy during the MS press conference). And plus, achievements have been around for a long time as a lot of games offered similarly styled achievements or medals for accomplishing certain tasks (Rogue Squadron 2 for GCN had medals for example) the only difference now is MS has made these accomplishments more readily available to look at and at a much broader range.
You obviously have little to no experience with achievements if you think it does nothing to show how good a player you are. I can think of probably 10 games right off the top of my head that show you're damn good if you have certain achievements. Anyone with half a clue can tell you when someone has the mile-high achievement that they have some decent skill (and determination) in a certain FPS that's fairly popular... ^^
The Xbox version of Halo 2 didn't have achievements, only the PC version did (it was pretty much the launch title for the Live service on PCs). And it's worth noting Halo 3 is the 360 game with the most achievements, as there are always more achievements with each piece of DLC they put out.
It's kewl if you miss the point of them, but I really don't think it's a small, insignificant portion of the playerbase which cares about achievements. If that was true, why did Sony appropriate the idea/concept and create Trophies?
High scores are just as subjective as achievements. You do realize what a developer is, they're the ones who create the games and set the "rules", so they could just as easily make you do meaningless stuff for high scores as well. Many games in the NES era and beyond gave you points for doing extra stuff, that just took time to do.
Achievements/Trophies are optional meta-games. Key word is optional. And there are definitely many achievements that show how good/dedicated someone is. I.e. there's no argument that someone who beat Ninja Gaiden 2 on Master Ninja difficulty has some serious skills and patience.
I kinda agree with everyone else. I don't think the "ach" mean all that much unless the game is good first. I do the "ach" whore thing too though with games but only if people on my friends list are doing the same...
In a lot of reviews achievements are mentioned whether or not they're balanced, too easy, too difficult, etc. I know a lot of 360 owners I know and 360 owners on my friends list really like achievements. We message each other all the time, "Hey what's that secret achievement you have and how do you get it?" or, "Hey, will you help me with the annual achievement?" etc. Unless you're involved in the live community you have no idea the impact of achievements. Though, it's not for ALL as some of my friends don't care too much, but for most, it's a pretty big deal. I can tell you games with bad achievements (Devil May Cry is a perfect example) weren't purchased by a lot of my friends and me because you were looking at netting only about 150 out of 1000 achievement points unless you put a hundred hours or more into the game and that was a huge drawback.
OK, so I have a gold account which I use to watch Netflix, download DLC and occasionally to play games online with friends and/or strangers; does that mean I'm "involved in the live community?" Or is this ridiculous obsession with gamerscore a prerequisite? I have to say I doubt that anything resembling a majority of live users share your and your friends' enthusiasm for achievements, but I base that on the fact that absolutely nobody I know (on live or in real life) does, either.
Also, I haven't played DMC4 and therefore have no opinion about whether it's worthy of purchase or playtime, but I nevertheless find the notion of somebody skipping it altogether based solely on how much gamerscore or how many trophies they're likely to earn laughably pathetic. Like I said in my other comment, this makes about as much sense to me as choosing games based on the color of the box.
It would seem from other comments here that I'm not alone in thinking this way. Like someone else said, it's wishful thinking on Microsoft's part that achievements are a big deal to anything more than a small subset of a subset of a subset of the overall gaming population.
Fair enough. Everyone's different.
No one except the ADD spackers care about achievements. Where as everyone else prefers well made games and it just happens well made games will tend to have well made achievements too.
All bias and snark aside, I find it near impossible to imagine someone deciding which $60 game to buy based on whether they have achievements and "implement them well," whatever that means. In all seriousness, I see this fuzzy criterion having about much relevance to actual quality of gameplay as the color of the box.
On another note, what's with the Toulouse series? If I cared one iota about the content of Major Nelson's podcast I'd subscribe to it. Or maybe the point of this series is to serve as a big ADVERTISEMENT for Major Nelson's podcast? It wouldn't surprise me: based on his absurd posturing in the "Inside Xbox" shorts he seems to be suffering under the pitiable delusion that he's some kind of gaming rockstar.
I don't know what the deal with Major Nelson is; I'm rather annoyed with hearing about him all the time. I don't even really know what his position is actually...
When I mentioned not buying DMC for the 360 there were more reasons than just crappy achievements. If you're already on the fence about a game, any number of factors may push you to one side or the other. Say perhaps coop is a big deal to you and a game comes out that you're on the fence about but it doesn't have coop (cough, KZ2 cough). That alone may be the nail in the coffin for you. Is that silly to not buy a $60 dollar game because it doesn't have a feature you care about if you're already on the fence? I didn't care so much for the DMC series when I had my PS2 so I really didn't care, but when I read up on its achievements and found out that for me the game really wouldn't have any redeeming qualities (no coop, crappy achievements, a lot of backtracking, etc.) I wasn't too interested. If the game had relatively easy achievements, maybe 500-600 just by playing through the game, I may have rented it. To some, even easy achievements isn't enough, but to some coop isn't important, to other people multiplayer isn't important. I know people who didn't buy Bioshock because it didn't have multiplayer or actually thought the game "sucked" because it was just a single-player game. Are they crazy, they passed up a $60 purchase because of a missing feature they care enough about to completely pass on a game? “That’s impossible.”
My point is who are we or anyone really to judge someone else for not picking up a game because of a feature they care about that's either missing or poorly implemented? Am I any worse for not buying DMC because the achievements sucked than the guy who passed on Bioshock (A GotY) because it didn't have multiplayer? Multiplayer is really important to some, coop is really important to some, a solid campaign is really important to some, and achievements are really important to some. I could give a rats as most of the time about multiplayer but like achievements where as someone else might be the polar opposite. We all have our specific tastes, likes, dislikes, and preferences and we shouldn't try to set a standard as what's a good enough reason for someone else to want/not want a game. I’m not going to tell you Dubs that you passing on KZ2 because it didn’t have coop was a silly reason (hypothetically speaking of course). If it’s a good enough reason to you who am I to try to tell you any different? I may think it’s a silly reason, but I can’t pass my opinion off as how it should be, as…it’s just my opinion.
Dubs, if this post came off as hostile I apologize as that wasn't my intention. Longwinded? Sure. But not hostile.
I feel like they are trying to find causation in this correlation. It could easily be that games that sell better are often more well developed, and therefore have better achievements. It doesn't mean that a game with achievements will sell better than the same game without.
wishful thinking