Achievement-Heavy Games Sell Well

[Logan Frederick]

Achievement-Heavy Games Sell Well

An Electronic Entertainment Design and Research report has found games with achievements tend to sell better than their prize-less counterparts.

Based on sales of Xbox 360 games from the first three months of 2008, EEDAR identified that games with more numerous achievements seemed to sell three times as well as those with fewer than 30 in-game goodies. Developers may be catching onto this trend, as the number of releases with over 40 separate Achievements rose eight percent to comprise more than 60 percent of all 360 games.

"It's certainly not that the achievements are driving game sales," said EEDAR director of research Shane Hebard-Massey. "Those dev teams are putting more work in to make a better experience for the gamer and that often carries through [to the rest of the game's development]."

Although Sony is adding "Trophies" to compete with the 360's existing Achievements system, EEDAR doesn't believe they'll play as significant a role in selling PS3 software.

"Almost every Xbox 360 user, no matter how casual, has earned an Achievement," wrote Hebard-Massey. "By not exposing users to trophies with every game, Sony is missing out on exposing the more casual user base to this system. Additionally, Sony is also not catering to the hardcore crowd that just love earning accomplishments."

Source: Gamespot [http://www.gamespot.com/news/6198361.html]

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[Jumplion]

Sony has said that they will make Trophys a requirment later in the future, so I look forward to adding more trophys to my collection.

 

[Imitation Saccharin]

Great, now they'll have even more numerous retarded achievements.

Medical Breakthrough: Assist in destroying 5 enemy engineer buildings with a single uber-charge on a Demoman.

Oh come on! That has nothing to even do with me!

 

[ElephantGuts]

Yeah, as an xbox 360 and achievment enthusiast, I do not see this as good news. All this means is that developers are going to start throwing tons of horrible and stupid achievments into their games, which would dilute the whole point of getting them, not to mention further embarrass people like me in conversations debating the merits of achievments. And I don't think number of achievments is relevant to sales anyway, I don't see how someone could decide to buy a game just because it has a lot of achievments, except for maybe those no-life achievment-whores who will play games they don't like just to boost their gamerscore. But those people deserve to rot.

 

[Saitken]

Normal achievements give me incentive to play and finish games i'd usually never play/finish. Breaking them down into even smaller pieces would really dishearten me.

 

[fluffylandmine]

Achivements are desirable because they mean you have to do something hard or epic or even comedic to get them.

Make an achievement for walking two steps and your going to be bludgeoned by the community.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

I think these statistics are kinda dumb, you're just comparing 360 game to 360 game - it's like "Halo 3 sold way more than crackdown" but I can guarantee it's not because of achievements.

I mean, are there really people out there so OCD that they want to buy a game because it comes with a to-do list?

 

[smallharmlesskitten]

Thank you captain obvious

 

[Slycne]

I would be interested in seeing which games were compared. As was eluded to, I believe this has more to do with the overall quality of the development process and less to do with the achievements themselves.

That said, while working at Best Buy, I had more then one customer request help finding titles with easy achievements to unlock to boost their gamer score. So there is at least some demand for it.

 

[Logan Frederick]

The better study would be whether games with higher review scores tend to have more achievements or not.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

I would be interested in seeing which games were compared. As was eluded to, I believe this has more to do with the overall quality of the development process and less to do with the achievements themselves.

That said, while working at Best Buy, I had more then one customer request help finding titles with easy achievements to unlock to boost their gamer score. So there is at least some demand for it.

Wow, what's stopping them from renting the game?

 

[Mister Ash]

this will probably sound odd, but on GTA4, i've done some of the 360 Achievements, on my PS3, just to see if i could do it... though i will admit, some of them do seem pretty inane, why have 'kill 3 striders with rockets' when you need to do that ingame, to get the 'beat the game' award?

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

People are phenomenal idiots

That's all that needs to be said.

Ooooh...a shiny thing...

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Hey now, stupidity is rather profitable - lets not underestimate it.

 

[Dommyboy]

Hey now, stupidity is rather profitable - lets not underestimate it.

It is after all what Microsoft based their first consumer audience upon.

 

[WTEricson]

So the M$ rep ragged on Sony for not making rewards so abundant that their lame... I rather have a dragon sitting in my Home personally than be a lame ass number. Sorry, M$ reps are worse than their 13 year old onsumers when it comes to picking fights they can't win then running away IMO. You ask Sony what they think and they just smile like the dam Chesure Cat and say "we are happy for them".