November saw Microsoft’s annual Hackathon, where groups of developers, designers and innovators from across Microsoft gather to compete and create potential new products and services within and adjacent to the Microsoft ecosystem. This year’s Hackathon winner was an app that helps you Provide technical support to those you love remotelygiven the all-too-familiar frustration one might encounter trying to help a less tech-savvy friend over the phone.
Microsoft Hackathon 2022 event (Opens in a new tab) It saw more than 10,000 inventions compete for the grand prize, with more than 68,000 employees from around the world participating in what Microsoft describes as “the world’s largest private hackathon”.
I recently had the opportunity to check out some hackathon projects myself thanks to reliable sources, and a couple of the Xbox-oriented projects certainly caught my eye. One project included a “Windows Handheld Mode” skin for Windows 11, which turns the interface into something more suited to gaming on a Steam Deck-sized laptop. There were also prototypes of streaming services, which would reward viewers with Microsoft Points for watching Xbox Live while integrating Twitch or Patreon. Another idea included the “Xbox Inventory” system, which would allow you to collect and carry in-game cosmetic items between titles. My favorite project — and one that I think is in high demand — is an extension of the existing Xbox achievements system, something the designers have called Xbox Achievements 3.0.
While it’s unclear who was behind the project, a team of designers and developers at Microsoft joined forces during this year’s Hackathon event to create a proof-of-concept of the so-called “Xbox Achievements 3.0.” This system will sit alongside the existing Gamerscore system, awarding players with PlayStation-like Bronze, Silver, and Gold awards for numerous per-title and even system-wide achievements. For example, in the video shared anonymously with us above, you can see the concept pop medal for playing 300 titles on Xbox Game Pass.
The presentation also showed how each medal will display under your profile on Xbox.com and on consoles, giving players another way to view their achievements across various activities on Xbox Live (which has since been renamed Xbox Network, although not Nobody’s going to call it that).
In any case, this concept is baffling, despite the fact that it will most likely never be embodied in a real product. It reminds us of some proposals for abolitionists Xbox Careers System From last year, as Microsoft acknowledged the fact that gamer habits have changed. More and more players are sticking to a single service-oriented title for longer periods of time, rather than grazing across multiple titles. Xbox Game PassHowever, the “all you can eat” library keeps Xbox Achievements afloat. Vampire survivors It offers mountains of gamerscore 5G achievements that show up at the end of every run, which is a really perfect use of the aging system. However, it has taken many unscrupulous independent publishers to release shovel games designed entirely to award 1,000 gamerscore for doing practically nothing – a practice that Sony PlayStation is said to be Plan to blockno less.
In any case, the fact that developers see this internally at Microsoft even in an amateur capacity suggests to me that there is a growing spotlight on how far the Xbox’s achievements have evolved, while competitors like PlayStation and Steam have built and improved on Microsoft’s legacy systems. to improve Xbox Achievements was one of the top concerns Xbox fans shared with me During my big poll last year, after all.
Personally, I’m hopeful we’ll see something like these Xbox “medals” materialize into a real product, one day.
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