To be honest I'm not a huge fan of achievements and trophies. I do put in a little effort for them sometimes, but don't go out of my way to a massive degree unless there is some benefit to them (like say the buffs you could get with the achievements for Mass Effect).
That said, I don't get this paticular project to be honest. Playstation Home at least sounded like a cool idea to begin with. Originally it was like a free "Second Life" with everyone being given a decent amount of personal building space, it got turned into a wallet grabbing virtual chat mode with heavy advertising.
This seems even more banal because in general it sounds like you can only invite friends online, it's not like people can just randomly visit your arcade to play games and goof off and see all your stuff. What's more Microsoft is basically asking people to dish out a couple od bucks for games that have basically been public domain or abandonware for a very long time.
The only potential I can see in this is legalistic if by charging money for some of these games Microsoft is hoping to effectively re-liscence them from the public domain, and then hopefully blockade competition by controlling basic pieces of code and game structures that people still build from. However this does seem unlikely due to the amount of ire it would raise, not to mention the fact that I think technically some titles like "Pac Man" and "Donkey Kong" that are appearing are still maintained which is why you see Pac Man clones and such usually using titles like "Eat Man" or "Snack Man".
That said I could be wrong but this strikes me as being a lot of wasted effort.
I once thought that this kind of thing would have been a good gimmick to add to an MMORPG however. Ever since the original Everquest launched the /Gems thing, it occured to me that one way to get people to keep playing might be to launch libraries of older games through the MMO, and perhaps add tangible rewards (items, stat boosts, etc...) for hitting milestones or completing them. Let's say for example I put an arcade into a science fiction game, or say a console in someoone's "virtual home" for their characters (like SWG or whatever). Then I put game cartridges or whatever into the game as things you can buy with your collected credits (or pay per play in an arcade) and perhaps as drops or quest rewards. Then if say someone manages to beat a game like the original "Wasteland" they get a cooresponding piece of loot or something (like a gun, piece of armor, etc...) inspired by the game. The quality of which being proportional to the effort. In the end for the price of buying some abandonware rights up I could add 20-40 hours at a pop in some cases to people's playtimes as they sought these items and unlocks, which of course cooresponds to people ultimatly paying me more in subscription fees and the like. I figured if some people would sit there for hours doing /gems when it first came out, just imagine what you could do by putting "real games" into your game as part of a package.
I even once thought it could be amusing to say run an MMORPG through an MMORPG. Say picking up something like Shadows Of Ysebrius/Fates Of Twinon which was released public domain at some point I heard, and then having it launch through your MMORPG. So basically your virtual character could ultimatly pay a subscription fee with the in-game currency (no real money aside from the overall game fee) login through a computer in game, and then play an MMORPG in an MMORPG. That's just me getting trippy though. God forbid I ever win the lottery or something, I'll probably actually invest in an MMORPG and try and do something like that just for my own amusement. ;P
For those that read this far, the above is however NOTHING like what Microsoft has come up with. Truely this basically blows my mind, and I'm going to be fairly surprised if it succeeds. I just can't see what the appeal to their arcade plan is. I saw the potential in Home before Sony gutted it... but this is actually worse than Animal Crossing with real money.
