Xbox owners - I've had an idea...

[Zantos]

The cost of live is a very small price to pay, and economically giving things for free that cost money to make and run is a dirty trick that leads to poor quality products. Sony have to pay ludicrous amounts of money every year to run PSN that could be used for much better things than just trying to undercut microsoft services.

 

[PettingZOOPONY]

- Despite not making money through MS points anymore I think it would actually earn a bigger profit for Microsoft and the entire industry. The fairer system would persuade more gamers to buy Xbox's which helps Microsoft, and the idea of using Gamerscore earned from achievements to buy DLC will encourage gamers to buy more Xbox games to get their Gamerscore. This not only helps Microsoft, but the Dev's, Publishers, and Game Retailers too.

What about indie/smaller devs? You would see them all abandon the Xbox and move to the PS3/PC.

What do yo mean move? They are already there.

 

[Luke McDowd]

OK, so far a lot of people have made a good point, I didn't consider how indy developers making titles for the Xbox Live arcade would make a profit. However, a solution to that would be to keep MS points around but SPECIFICALLY for this situation. Microsoft could make the rule that only DLC can be bought with Gamerscore, while all full games (weather on disk or on XBLA) have to be paid for.

Other than that I really do believe there would be an increase in Xbox/Xbox Game/Live subscription sales that would make up for not using MS points anymore. I know that's speculation on my part, but isn't every idea at least in some part speculation until you put it into practice?

Edit: Oh, and I would make achievements give out much more Gamerscore so it wouldn't feel so much like grinding.

The main issue I see with this is that DLC doesn't come from Microsoft. It comes from the game developers, they are the one's seeing the profit when you use your points to buy it. Yes your money originally goes to MS when you buy MS Points, but by using those points to buy a DLC for Oblivion for example, Microsoft then in turn goes and gives money to Bethesda for it. If you eliminate this entirely companies will put time, manpower and money into creating more content for your game, all for zero profit.
The only way using Gamerscore for a currency will work is if it is used to buy things available exclusively from Microsoft themselves. IE: As has been said previously, avatar gear, Microsoft produced skins etc. As it stands Gamerscore will only be used as bragging rights, and since that's why and how it was designed, I don't see it changing any time soon.

 

[fragmaster09]

It could work, but some people say Micro$oft (M$) for a reason. :/
Also, the prices of DLC would have to go down (or the amount of gamerscore per achievement would have to go up). I hardly ever even get close to 1000G in every game I buy. If a map pack for CoD is 1200 MS points (making it 1200G in this new system), that takes 1 game's whole achievement list plus 200G from another game.

i say microso£t, but that's cause i'm from UK, we dont use $, haha, so i replace the letter that looks most like £... then again Ms is after $$$, since my £££ are converted to $$$ and MS uses that, since they are american...

ok, fine idea, but why not something that M$ owns, keep DLC for M$P but LiVe for GS, that way, it rewards players with the equivalent of PS3, but you WORK for it, giving you a sense of it being a REWARD =]

 

[fragmaster09]

The cost of live is a very small price to pay, and economically giving things for free that cost money to make and run is a dirty trick that leads to poor quality products. Sony have to pay ludicrous amounts of money every year to run PSN that could be used for much better things than just trying to undercut microsoft services.

microsoft just HAPPENS to have run their gaming community for longer than PS3 has been around(sony's first REAL attempt at a games console), so they have more experience, money and people, THAT's why we get better services(which is better but still ful of whining kids and Microsoft's auto-messages to any complaints), they charge for Xbox LIVE because they CAN, they dont feel he need to undercut Sony, but Sony is the newest challenger(nintendo didn't really stand a chance), so they need to undercut microsoft.

microsoft makes so much money from everything else that a million or so a year being used to let us ply for free would be like 1p to me or you - nothing, they want PROFIT, so they force us to cough up, and we won't move to PS3 because all our things from our games are on the Xbox, all our games are FOR the Xbox, and we paid £250 FOR the Xbox, totalling more than £300, and we dont want to start again, so they can just keep pumping us dry

 

[Davey Woo]

A nice idea in theory, but you know even if Microsoft did go for this idea (which they almost certainly woouldn't) Microsoft would only force devs to have 1000 achievements worth 1G each so it's an absolute nightmare to actually get anything.
Microsoft, LOVE money, they will not pass up the chance to get more of it, especially as thouasands of people are happy to pay for membership.

 

[fragmaster09]

How did this thread get this long? I can only hope that some of the pages I skipped are pretty much a wall of no.

To quote my favorite animated dude with a hat...

Short answer: No.
Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Assigning any value at all to gamerscore is quite possibly one of the worst ideas I've heard in 2012. Right up there with "hey Juan, lets get our colons super-magnetized!"

No value should ever be assigned to gamerscore. Quite the opposite, gamerscore should be eliminated entirely.

/thread.

short answer: fail
long answer:FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIL

assuming that the year we live in is 2012 is as bad an assumption as Activision assuming that PS3 players wouldn't go crazy over 1 month early DLC for Xbox, even though that play online for free.

my friend who had never heard of Ben Crosshaw before said "he sounds like you, but with a lot more cussing", he had no idea what zero punctuation was...

Ben "Yahtzee" Crosshaw
Vs
Ben "Scrabble" ******* <--- i'm not saying my last name...

Who wins?

 

[Rad Party God]

Snippity snip

It seems like an amazing idea and I'm all for it, but there's just one tiny little detail that you have to consider. PIRACY.

Forget all the people who's saying that the PC is the main pirated platform, the 360 is being pirated, a lot, someone who's pirated more than 50 games will get the chance to "steal" some legit games through XBLA and Games on Demand.

Heck, even for people with legit games on the PC, the games that are labeled as Games For Windows LIVE gives you achievements and gamerscore and all that shit, that's good and all, but it's amazingly easy to cheat on your gamerscore, heck, I've done it a couple of times (it's amazingly hard to get a multiplayer match in Gears of War for PC, so it's even harder to get those MP achievements).

So, as amazing as it would, I don't think that MS would do something like that, but still, I'd love to see some way to get rewarded for those useless numbers on my Gamerscore.

 

[SilentCom]

This idea could be easily exploited. People could just make new accounts just to get the achievements again so they can get free downloads.

 

[Zantos]

The cost of live is a very small price to pay, and economically giving things for free that cost money to make and run is a dirty trick that leads to poor quality products. Sony have to pay ludicrous amounts of money every year to run PSN that could be used for much better things than just trying to undercut microsoft services.

microsoft just HAPPENS to have run their gaming community for longer than PS3 has been around(sony's first REAL attempt at a games console), so they have more experience, money and people, THAT's why we get better services(which is better but still ful of whining kids and Microsoft's auto-messages to any complaints), they charge for Xbox LIVE because they CAN, they dont feel he need to undercut Sony, but Sony is the newest challenger(nintendo didn't really stand a chance), so they need to undercut microsoft.

microsoft makes so much money from everything else that a million or so a year being used to let us ply for free would be like 1p to me or you - nothing, they want PROFIT, so they force us to cough up, and we won't move to PS3 because all our things from our games are on the Xbox, all our games are FOR the Xbox, and we paid £250 FOR the Xbox, totalling more than £300, and we dont want to start again, so they can just keep pumping us dry

I'm sorry, did I miss the part where the 1995 Playstation release didn't count as a real console? I mean it did sell millions of units and millions of games to go with it, so it seemed like a pretty legit attempt. Maybe it's just nostalgia talking, but it seemed at the time to be the item which popularised home gaming for a massive audience.

Both Microsoft and Sony want profit, but whereas Microsoft charge for a good service which they profit on, Sony sinks money in the hope people buy their product instead of their competior, which they then have to support. Anything that you have to sink more money into the more consumers you get is a piss poor business model, and I'm really glad Microsoft havn't caved to it.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

I don't think it would work. Mainly because you'd be using Gamerscore to pay for DLC, and developers wouldn't want that, so they come up with some other form of currency. But ALL developers would create a different currency, so the whole thing becomes a shambles.

How about, instead of EVERYTHING being bought wih Gamerscore, only avatar items were. They serve no real purpose, they're purely cosmetic. And as far as I know, they're created by Microsoft, so developers aren't losing out.

nothing to do with the conversation, but only about your avatar picture. i noticed that its an awesome collection of aperture, the assassins and cerberus. then, i started thinking about the why's.

i could see the combo of cerberus and aperture, both being essentially "bad" organizations, but the assassins are generally considered the "good" guys, though the enemies do their best at lending some ambiguity to the situation. overall, i'd say the templars fit better in that axis of evil, although the logo wouldn't be nearly as cool.

just wondering your inspiration, but nice pic regardless.

 

[TornadoFive]

I don't think it would work. Mainly because you'd be using Gamerscore to pay for DLC, and developers wouldn't want that, so they come up with some other form of currency. But ALL developers would create a different currency, so the whole thing becomes a shambles.

How about, instead of EVERYTHING being bought wih Gamerscore, only avatar items were. They serve no real purpose, they're purely cosmetic. And as far as I know, they're created by Microsoft, so developers aren't losing out.

nothing to do with the conversation, but only about your avatar picture. i noticed that its an awesome collection of aperture, the assassins and cerberus. then, i started thinking about the why's.

i could see the combo of cerberus and aperture, both being essentially "bad" organizations, but the assassins are generally considered the "good" guys, though the enemies do their best at lending some ambiguity to the situation. overall, i'd say the templars fit better in that axis of evil, although the logo wouldn't be nearly as cool.

just wondering your inspiration, but nice pic regardless.

Well, basically, I love Portal, I love Mass Effect and I love Assassin's Creed. So I combined their logos/symbols into one pic.

There's honestly no deeper meaning behind it! I love all 3 series, so I found a logo for each and put them all together! And was quite surprised when it turned out as well as it did.

 

[Adam Galli]

When I first got my Xbox I thought gamerscore WAS Microsoft points. That's a mighty fine idea that you have though.

 

[Chelsea O'shea]

alot of the money microsoft makes off of us goes to xbl upgrades and security,so i have no problem paying for gold.