Just to clarify the difference between Microsoft Points and Achievements, at least how I understand them:

Microsoft Points ($$) - the currency of the Xbox Live Marketplace. You need these to buy games and content.
Xbox Achievements - gamerscore earned with no dollar value that identify achievements made within games. Like beating the whole game might earn 100 gamerscore.

Scoble is thinking aloud that Microsoft could have something useful in the fight against Google with ‘Microsoft “points”‘ but some of his commenters seem confused. Those who own and use Xbox Live know what Scoble meant, but I can see others — especially non-gamers — being confused. There aren’t achievement points, only achievements and gamerscore, see the official Xbox site.

Zune, for example, doesn’t currently have any achievements, although it would be interesting if someday they did offer achievements for using the Zune device. e.g if you ’squirt’ (don’t shoot, I don’t like the term either) a song you get a one time achievement of say 10. This is the kind of thing Scoble is pondering.

Xbox 360 web browser needed ASAP
Before any of this happens the Xbox 360 needs a web browser. Both competing next generation systems (PS3 and Wii) have web browsers and where is the Xbox 360? A major reason Xbox Live is doing well with video distribution is because people don’t have to involve their computers. It’s relatively painless distribution. They can order the content on a device hooked to the TV and a little while later (possibly a long time later if it’s an HD movie and the servers are getting hammered) enjoy the content. Our family rented a movie through there (Timeline) for movie night a few weeks back. Worked slick. We’ll be repeat customers.

Separate gaming from non-gaming achievements games
Our son has worked very hard building the family Xbox account to nearly 15,000 gamerscore (pictured above). Our youngest child has worked hard building up his gamerscore too (he has over 5,000). You bet the gamerscore is important to them and I don’t think they’d be very excited if anybody with a web browser and internet connection could attain more gamerscore by doing easy non-gaming achievements. Where’s the challenge in that?

Competing against Google
How this might impact Google is thought provoking. I’ve been saying Xbox Live is Microsoft’s not so secret weapon for awhile now, the last time when I mentioned Zune and seeing a greater strategy down the road. This was totally discounted as any sort of compelling factor by Chicago Sun-Times writer Andy Ihnatko who flamed the Zune. I think 2007/2008 are the year of Microsoft expanding their greatest success since Office and Windows: Xbox Live.

Keep the achievements tied to revenue
Currently in order to earn an achievement you need to buy, rent or have a friend loan you a game. You can’t just arbitrarily earn achievement for activities as Scoble suggests. I think it’s good that way and that they should expand to non-gaming related achievement points but keep it tied to some sort of revenue. Perhaps, for those who buy Vista the first year, you can earn one time only achievment by doing desktop searches or adding macros.

Or from the developer side, create a Live search macro and earn an achievement perhaps? There are many exciting possibilities here that would attract fans of increasing their achievements.

The gamerscore is one element, but unless those achievements are tied to some sort of revenue, that diminishes the value and attraction. The way it is now, it costs money to be able to earn achievement. You can’t earn them for free, unless it’s a free game (of which there have been relatively few of those offered to date). You don’t have to buy the games, I suppose, you could rent them, earn the achievement score and then return the rental. The rentals still ring cash registers though.

I’ll say it again and bold it: Microsoft needs to keep the Achievements tied to some sort of revenue.

Microsoft Points are the key
The more important piece I think are Microsoft Points. Microsoft has a powerful micropayment system in place that could be leveraged onto the web and used as a counter to PayPal and Google Checkout via their slowly evolving AdCenter product. Imagine being able to place contextual ads on your sites where you could earn a slice of the sale generated for Live marketplace content? They could offer AdCenter affiliates two different plans: CPA (cost per sale) or CPC (cost per click like Adsense).

Great potential here. Will Microsoft pull the trigger? They’d be foolish not to take advantage of what I see as a logical progression of all products. What do you think?

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