Interesting Gamasutra article out today on a study from research group Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR) that shows better achievements can drive better sales. Achievements have been a bit of a phenomenon, and it's been pretty obvious that other platforms would be following Xbox LIVE's lead soon enough. (To be clear, I'm not saying that the idea of awards or badges for achieving certain tasks is new; however, LIVE enabled the concept seamlessly for all games on the platform. There was lots of initial skepticism from partners, but I think folks are pretty well bought in now.)

Here's an interesting snippet from the article:

Can you break down the different types of accomplishments you've identified?

GZ: We broke them down into 16 different types, and we've got very specific definitions about what each one is. They go from action accomplishments which reward you for doing an action to something as specific as one related to user generated content, or games that do unlocks, time based or score based accomplishments, initiation, elimination, customization, collection, community, challenges, advancement. They really track to different player types.

We've found that games that incorporate a wider diversity of accomplishments, they hit more people with the things that they really like, and they tend to do better, they tend to get reviewed better, which isn't necessarily terribly surprising. The same goes for quantity.

It's interesting -- we actually have time graphs over the years since the release of the Xbox 360, showing that while it didn't start out that way, it's definitely that way now. As people learned what the accomplishments do, it's actually rather striking. When you look at sales figures for the first five or six months, it really didn't matter as much, but as the consumers have got used to them, they now really seem to be focusing on games that [have more and diverse accomplishments].

I've been on a bit of a "we need to really go enable asynchronous gaming" kick, and you'll see more in that vein going forward. The main thing I wanted to point out here was that achievements are, in many ways, nothing more than another form of async gaming. It's a game where you compete across games to collect Gamerscore, and within games to collect achievements - in many cases, challenging friends to get the same achievements. You don't have to be online at the same time to play, and you can play at any time, and from multiple platforms. Today those platforms include the Xbox 360 and Games for Windows - LIVE... tomorrow, who knows?

Oh - since I know my bringing up G4WL is going to cause some reaction from people who aren't thrilled with our early implementations (in Shadowrun and Halo 2), it's worth saying that I'm still personally excited to where we're going with it. Microsoft is (for better or worse) known for iterating and improving products continually. The old joke is that it takes three versions to deliver what people are happy with - frankly, I think we did pretty darn well with v1 and v2 of LIVE (for Xbox and Xbox 360), and I know folks will be very pleased with what's coming down the pipe for both LIVE and G4WL. Can't talk details for obvious reasons, but let's just say that we fully know things that we need to deliver. Time and space, my friends... time and space.

... also known as "games you can play with your friends without having to be online at the same time." In this case, it's a Wall Street Journal article from this weekend that focuses on Scrabulous, a Facebook application. It's basically Scrabble, except you can play turn-at-a-time with multiple people over whatever timeframe works for you.

I've written about this before, but I think one of the biggest things we as an industry can do is focus on enabling async gaming on gaming platforms. People can't always sit down and play a marathon Halo 3 session together, and it's pretty obvious to me that one of the major reasons Scrabulous is so popular is that it both allows you to play on your own time, as well as play from different locations (thanks to being web-based). This is actually one of the reasons I'm so excited about Microsoft's LIVE Anywhere initiative. Over time, LIVE will be one of the largest online gaming networks that allows you to play with single identity across multiple platforms wherever you wish. Async gaming fits naturally here.

Don't believe the potential? Here's a quote from the article:

Since its Facebook debut in July, Scrabulous has grown to about 950,000 players. According to Facebook's data, 36% of those players (about 342,000 people) are "daily active users," or people who have logged in every day over the last 30 days. That's compared with an average of 7% for the site's top 50 tools and games, according to SocialMedia, a social-advertising company that tracks Facebook activity.

Just last night Halo 3 had just under 600k users online when I was playing. Scrabulous has over half of that playing at least once a day already - and that's just one game. What happens when we start seeing hundreds of these sorts of games? Time will be easier to find (since you're looking for bite-sized slices), but you'll have to filter through and find the worthy games. Guess there will always be challenges to overcome.

Note: if you're interested, make sure to read the Wall Street Journal article soon. It's only free for a limited time.

Been doing a lot of work on future platform planning and was having a conversation with a co-worker about our "Live Anywhere" initiative. Although there are a lot of different aspects of Live Anywhere that excite me, one of the areas I've been doing a lot of thinking around is the "life gets in the way" aspect of gaming. You get older, get into relationships, get married, have kids - the list goes on and on. And every one of those layers makes it challenging to continue playing.

Anyway, I was telling that co-worker about a great video we did back in the early days of Xbox Live that really captured this aspect. Amusingly, it was easier for me to go find on YouTube rather than internally, so I figured I'd share it with you while I had the link. Hope you like it!

[YouTube:IVm0JSjma6g]

Yep, as you probably saw around the web we have a new Dash update coming down the pipe for the Xbox 360. Lots of new features - I'll point you to Major Nelson's link for all the in-depth details, but will crib a bit of his text below:

• The redesigned Achievement notification pop-up (toast) will show the name of the unlocked Achievement and the gamerscore value. You’ll see this information the moment you earn an achievement. No more popping open the guide and interrupting your gameplay. (screenshot)
• Enhanced family settings features for Xbox LIVE communications enable different defaults for video chat and voice chat.
• A new Xbox LIVE Marketplace blade lets Xbox LIVE members access the content they seek - whether it is game content or TV shows and movies (available in the United States) - from one place.
• Updates to Xbox LIVE Arcade allow owners to see which Xbox LIVE Arcade games their friends are playing and join in the fun. Xbox LIVE members can also compare progress of leaderboard scores and Achievements directly with all friends on their friends list. The Tell a Friend capabilities have been expanded as well.
• A new option in Auto Downloads provides faster access to the entire collection of free, trial-version Xbox LIVE Arcade games.
• New progressive download controls provide easy access to optimal viewing options by letting people fast-forward, rewind, pause and resume as their video is downloaded from Xbox LIVE Marketplace.
• Extension of the background download functionality will allow owners to set their Xbox 360 console to turn off automatically after downloads are complete.

Probably the most exciting aspect to me is the Live Messenger integration (the artist formerly known as MSN Messenger), as well as the release of a TID (or Text Input Device - we're nothing if not clever when it comes to naming peripherals!) Remember my earlier post on "Live Anywhere?" With this Dash release and the upcoming release of the first titles using Games for Windows - LIVE, we're well on the way to delivering this vision. Looking forward to what you all think!

Oh, and before I go, a quick pic (again, with thanks to Major Nelson). For what it's worth, the TID looks just like the picture and feels great - light but solid, with great tactile feedback on the keys. I'm also able to type on it pretty easily, and I can't say that for other mini keyboards (as I have fat fingers). I think you'll like it.

With full credit to Kim Pallister's blog for pointing it out, I wanted to share a great video that summarizes the evolution of the web and explains quite succinctly what all this "Web 2.0" stuff is about. Web 2.0 is a pretty over-burdened phrase these days, to the point where it's almost assumed to be a buzzword. Spend a minute and watch... I think you'll see there's some substance here.

[YouTube:6gmP4nk0EOE]

The big change is just as the video says: we're moving to a world where data is no longer tied to form and structure, and can be used in ways never before intended. You've all seen Google Maps mashups, right? That's just the tip of the iceberg. Think about what starts happening when "Web 2.0" concepts become a part of your gaming world. Imagine a world where tips to the section of the game you're playing are a button-press away, thanks to the game exposing metadata about where you are. What if you as users were creating that content? Or imagine being able to find interesting "content" (purposely using a very general word here) based upon ratings and rankings of your peers? And what happens when you add in the ability to rank and rate the feedback of those peers, and hence get a better sense of the value of the contributors opinion?

There will be some rough spots (as Penny Arcade so aptly captures below), but on the whole I'm super-excited about the next five years as we look ahead at bringing gaming and gaming features to the online community. Live Anywhere is just the tip of the iceberg....

Just wanted to write a quick post to thank all of you who had suggestions for us about the future of Live. While I can't comment on specific suggestions, I can say that many of your thoughts are already being thought about. There were also some new ideas or spins on others that have sparked great conversations here at the office. Now the hard part - time to sit back and see what comes out of all that. Should be a fun year!

Lots of links, here's one from the local Seattle Times.

Ten million units sold wasn't a surprise, the holiday bump does wonders. It'll be interesting to see what sort of momentum that gives the system into next holiday. Holiday 2007 is where the great "war" will really be decided. That's when all the systems will be easy to find at retail, and the second to third generation of games (depending on system) will be showing off what they're capable of. It may come down to system exclusives, and those are getting rarer and rarer to find this generation.

I'm really looking forward to more details on the IPTV functionality being announced so we can have a real conversation about it. For now, just the potential of set top boxes being replaced by 360s that can both play games and act as a PVR has me salivating. I'm a tech geek, yes, but I'm not thrilled by the preponderence of boxes in my A/V stack. Would love to have a single box to tune digital TV, watch DVD/HD-DVD, and of course, play games. It's also interesting to think about what affect having a set top box that plays 360 games might have on traditional non-gamers. One can hope the box might act as a gateway - perhaps through Arcade - and allow people to try games who might not have otherwise. 

And five million Live subscribers? What's to say? Over half of 360s are connected and online, compared to around 10% for the original Xbox. Whether or not you're a fan of online gaming, the ability to stay connected to the community and friends is huge in my book. And as you learn more about Live Anywhere, all of those connected people will become all the more valuable to you. It's going to be a fun year!

Apologies for the lack of posts recently - it's been a rather busy time at work as I caught up from my Peru trip, and I've been traveling all over the place for a variety of work reasons. I'm actually returning from San Francisco even as we speak, and writing thanks to a recent beta of Microsoft's Live Writer offline blogging tool. Although not the subject of this post, I did want to mention it as it's a fantastic tool. Check it out if you do any blogging. It appears to work with most sites, and it's definitely made my blogging "job" a whole lot easier!

Anyway, while I was in San Francisco I was able to meet up with Mark Deloura (ex Sony developer relations manager, now with Ubisoft) and Jane Pinckard (she of Gamegirladvance.com) for a couple of drinks. Was great catching up with them of course, but during the course of the conversation we started talking about an interesting area that's not currently being covered by casual games - namely, asynchronous games.

So what are async games? Simply put, imagine a game where you don't have to have a person (or a group of people) playing with you at the same time - you basically take turns. Checkers or Chess is one simple example, and the old play-by-mail wargames are another (albeit with significantly greater delay between turns). Today you see a few games that fall into this mold. Civilization has had a play-by-email mode for a few versions now, and there are X-Com-like clones like Laser Squad Nemesis that also enable it. Although I don't know for sure, I suspect some of the upcoming Live Arcade board games such as Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan will have turn-based play which lend themselves to asynchronous play should the game designers desire, and I'm sure there are plenty of others as well. What's interesting is that we don't see is a lot of these asynchronous games in the casual space yet... and I suspect we'll start seeing more in the future.

Why? Simply put, we're moving into a world of connected gaming devices. Microsoft has announced the Live Anywhere initiative, where we're looking to take the Xbox Live service and enable it on multiple devices such as consoles, the PC, and mobile devices such as phones. Sony has announced connectivity between their (sadly doomed, at least for v1) PSP and the PS3, and Nintendo has enabled wireless connectivity between the Nintendo DS and hinted at wireless connectivity between the DS and the Wii. These platforms are now technically enabling wireless connections between devices and people; what's missing are the games that allow people to play on these platforms at the times and places that best suit them.

Think about it - today when we sit down to play a game we pretty much do exactly that: sit. We have to choose a time and place and tether ourself to the experience on a single device, even if that experience is being played on a portable gaming device. What's missing is the ability to start a game and continue it in some meaningful way. Why can't I start up an Advance Wars game with three other friends, and set the rules such that we each agree to do two moves a day (with automatic moves applied if you don't check in)? Why can't I then continue that game on the bus with my handheld phone? Why can't I review the overall tactical map when I'm at work on my PC?

There's no technical reason blocking this. The platforms I described above allow you to connect and communicate, so that's reasonably easy (although it's obviously my hope that we make Live Anywhere the absolute easiest way to enable this). There is a cost inhibitor, however, in that there's design time needed to take a game and make it best-suited to work on a platform's capabilities. And depending on the platform(s) you're developing for, you may well have to budget 2-3x the development cost of the game to create the different versions (ie, one for console, one for handheld, one for phone, etc.) As a quick aside, it's worth noting that XNA Studio is one attempt to solve this issue, as it comes with the XNA Framework that enables developers to basically "write once, publish many."

My guess is that as these connected platforms take off and gamers demand to be able to stay connected with their friends wherever and whenever they play, we'll see a greater investment into asynchronous games. Just off the top of our heads, Mark, Jane, and I came up with a bunch of great old games we'd love to see redone in this manner. Imagine a new version of The Incredible Machine, but with full 3D and physics, and turn-based gameplay where each player has a bucket of items they can place to either help or hinder the current objective. Or an Advance Wars meets Risk sort of game, with many people battling it out over a world map over the period of a week, with a tactical overview map you can always check in on. Toss in a basic map editor so you can create next week's battlefield while waiting at the doctor's office and you really start seeing the potential.

It may take a while, but I sincerely believe the concept of asynchronous gaming will become just as embedded into the gaming consciousness as a desired feature as co-op has become. It'll be interesting to see which casual games start the trend.

That leads to an interesting question... what casual games would you like to see developed that have asynchronous-friendly designs? Could be old classics that you miss that just need an updated twist, or entirely new game ideas. Maybe it's a classic boardgame that's just begging to be released as a casual game. Would love to hear them, and who knows, it's quite possible some of the casual game developers out there or people exploring XNA Game Studio can take the idea and run with it.

That said, it is very important to state that this is a public blog and I have no control over who might read and use your idea. If you want to share an idea in the hope that someone might comment on it or help make it better, feel free. But if you think you might want to develop it yourself, you should not publish it here as there's nothing keeping anyone from taking it and running with it. Just don't want anyone to get bitten accidentally.

Look forward to the discussion!

Had a couple of emails from folks asking about this post from Shacknews about "Panorama". To quote:

"Shacknews has learned from reputable sources who wish to remain nameless that Microsoft plans to introduce what seems to be a Windows gaming service called "Panorama." Apparently, Panorama will be a part of Windows Vista and will act essentially as Xbox Live Arcade for Windows. PC gamers will be able to not only play Live Arcade games, but will also be able to engage in multiplayer gaming versus gamers playing on the Xbox 360 version of the service. It does not appear that Panorama emulates the Xbox 360 environment, which suggests that developers creating cross-platform compatible Live Arcade games may have to release two versions, one for each platform. However, Microsoft tools such as XNA should expedite this process."

Not sure where this theory came from, but I can tell you that Panorama is simply a codename. As we announced at E3, we're looking to extend the Xbox Live community and services to other platforms; Panorama is simply the first stage of that, where we extend Xbox Live services to Windows. Nothing more, nothing less. I wouldn't read too much into this myself.

Just saw a discussion over on Evil Avatar about some matchmaking updates that Bungie has announced for Halo 2. As you might imagine, people have opinions that are all over the map. Some like Halo's "automagical" matchmaking (an advanced implementation of Xbox Live's OptiMatch concept), while others hate it and want old-school, PC-like server browsing.

We're always looking for feedback to help improve Xbox Live and Live Anywhere - what do you think is the optimal solution? And please, when you answer try to take into account that we're looking at this from the perspective of multiple platforms such as Windows, Xbox 360, and others such as cell phones. With that in mind, what are your thought as to the "perfect" matchmaking system? The product teams do read your comments, and we definitely appreciate your help and feedback!

Been meaning to write some thoughts about Live Anywhere, the initiative we announced at E3 this year to bring the Xbox Live online gaming service to Windows and other devices such as cell phones. Several sites had articles on the topic, including Arstechnica who I’ll quote as they had a good summary:

"In a presentation at E3, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates talked up the Xbox 360's success while unveiling an extension of the company's increasingly popular Xbox Live service. "Live Anywhere" will allow gamers to take their tags, stats, and online profiles with them wherever they go online, whether it's on the Xbox, a PC, or even a Pocket PC or mobile phone. Microsoft is expecting to have over 6 million gamers signed on to Xbox Live by this time next year. When combined with the 25 million "casual gamers" on MSN Messenger and MSN Games, Microsoft believes this represents a huge opportunity.

Gamers will be able to log onto Live Anywhere from their PCs and go head-to-head with Xbox 360 gamers on cross-platform titles. Want some multiplayer Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter action from your PC against an Xbox-owning friend? You've got it.

Microsoft is also extending the service to mobile devices. While you won't be able to play a Halo 3 deathmatch on your mobile phone while riding the bus home from work, you will be able to access your Live Anywhere user data, send messages to friends on your Live friends list, and download "exclusive" mobile gaming content along with favorites such as Bejeweled. The mobile version of Live Anywhere will run on any Java-based, BREW-based, or Windows Mobile phones and Pocket PCs."

One thing that struck me from the E3 press at the time was that there wasn’t as much excitement around the announcement as I might have expected. I can only assume that’s because this is one of those things that’s bigger than people can easily wrap their heads around, so I thought I’d talk about some of the aspects that excite me personally.

One of the first is simply that this is the first step in expanding the “Xbox Live” community to a much wider world of platforms and people. (I put “Xbox Live” in quotes only because the Live Anywhere team is doing a lot of great work to take into account the differences of the PC as a gaming platform, and not just doing a straight port.) You’ll be able to keep your Gamertag and login to either your Xbox 360 or Windows machine, and that in turn will enable you to access all of the goodness you associate with your account: presence, viewing Achievements, Gamerscore, people’s Gamercards, sending and receiving messages, etc.

So far so good. Now let’s add in mobile devices. We also announced that Live Anywhere will be available on mobile devices such as your cell phone. And in a telling indication of how serious Microsoft is about this, we’ll be doing work to bring Live Anywhere to non-Microsoft cell phone platforms including Java and Brew-based devices. As this Engadget article shows, you’ll be able to try out (and purchase) casual games, download content for other devices (for example, to your Xbox 360 at home while you’re on the road), see rankings, Gamercards, and presence of friends, and of course communicate with them as well. So now we’re at a total universe (at least as currently announced) of millions of potential devices you’ll be able to sign into (between Xbox 360s, Windows machines, and cell phones). The potential network effect of the community growing is super-exciting to me here.

So let’s think about the cross-platform ramifications of all this. With Live Anywhere, I’ll be able to log into any of these platforms and be connected to my friends, community, and gaming world no matter where I am. With all due respect to Penny Arcade’s strip (warning, language may offend), there are aspects of the community that I want to stay in touch with whenever possible. While I doubt I’d be all that worried about a friend’s Gamerscore while at the store, I’d sure love to be able to drop him or her a message if I saw them online. And remember, “online” could include being signed in on their cell phone, or being logged into MSN Messenger, or just being on their Xbox. Now it gets interesting... what if I can send a text or voice message from my 360 to my friend who’s working on his PC? What if he can respond right back in real-time with text, voice, or even video? What if they see a third friend is showing as available on their cell phone? What if we’re able to have a three-way conversation to coordinate a game later? Heck, what if we're all able to start playing an ad-hoc game right then, in spite of the fact we're on different platforms?

One of the really cool scenarios described at E3 was the ability to continue a game no matter where you are. Let’s say you download a trial of Zuma on your 360 at home, play it, and decide to purchase it. Later on you have to go to work, and find yourself on the bus with a half-hour to kill. Remembering Zuma, you log into Live Anywhere with your cell phone and download it – but since you’ve already purchased it with your Live Anywhere account, the service recognizes this and allows you to download the unlocked version. You play for a while and receive an Achievement. You see your stop coming up, so you quickly save your game. That game save (and the fact that you unlocked the Achievement) is stored on the Live Anywhere service, so that when you get to your desk and log in to My Xbox (god forbid you do any real work, after all) you can see your new Achievement (and maybe even continue playing on a Windows version of Zuma). Seeing a friend online, you might select that Achievement you just got and send him or her a challenge to beat it. The really interesting thing? Although you can find out if you wish, you don’t even need to know what platform your friend is logged in on – it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you know his or her Gamertag, which allows you to quickly pop off a message to them.

Now some folks might not want to be always connected, and that’s understandable. So there will be features to allow you to control your online presence just as we have on the Xbox 360 and MSN Messenger today (where you can show yourself as being Available, Busy, Offline, etc.) (This might also help address Penny Arcade’s concerns on the subject.

A final aspect of Live Anywhere that has me excited is the potential for making online gaming on the PC dramatically easier. Although I’d be the first to highlight that online gaming originated on the PC, the overall quality of the online gaming experience hasn’t evolved or improved all that much since then. Xbox Live was actually designed with the goal of solving a lot of the issues that plague online gaming. Those solutions were brought to Xbox and Xbox 360, and now, Live Anywhere is bringing it to Windows (and of course, other platforms).

Think about the challenges you often face when trying to get a PC game online session going. First you need to make sure your game is up to date, and often have to hunt down patches and apply them. Sometimes you need to upgrade video or sound drivers. Your router can block connections, forcing you to open ports and occasionally sacrifice a chicken (be really afraid if you want to try and host a game!) Once you’re in the game, you might want to communicate with other players – but everyone’s using a different voice solution. It’s hard to find people of the appropriate level to play against, and even when you find people on a server you don’t have any context to see what sort of player they are, or what sort of reputation they have. The list goes on and on, but the point I’m trying to make is it’s not as simple as the “tray and play” model Xbox Live has been able to enable. Live Anywhere aims to solve all of the above, and enable cross-platform gaming and communication to boot. All this across what could be the largest online gaming community in the world. Pretty amazing, no?

For the record, I recognize this all probably comes off as very pro-Microsoft and as a bit of a “yay us!” post. But I did want to try and share my opinions, and why I’m so passionate about Live Anywhere. Simply put, I truely believe Live Anywhere has potential to change the gaming industry in huge and positive ways in the years ahead. How? Well, here's just one (probably controversial) thought:

What if Live Anywhere did take off, and became the place to be because one of your preferred platforms (be it cell phone, Xbox 360, or PC) happened to be where you spent all your gaming time? This is all my opinion, of course, but it’s not hard for me to squint ahead at the future and imagine a time where Live Anywhere might be the online service for platforms from Sony, or Nintendo, or others. After all, running this sort of service takes a massive investment of time and money, and at the end of the day all these companies really want is a way to communicate with their customers and make money from selling games. We’ve been able to enable that desire for publishers on Xbox Live today; why not these hardware providers tomorrow?

Michael Wolf posted some good links to recent Games for Windows articles over on Gamerscoreblog.com, and I wanted to make sure you guys were aware of them. There's been a lot of good work to make Windows Vista a really compelling platform for both game developers and gamers, and these articles will give you a good overview why.

Some of "big deals" in my mind include the revamped Games Explorer, which basically has become a one-stop shop for all your gaming-related activities in Vista, and the fact that we'll be doing a lot to promote Windows gaming (or PC gaming, however you like to call it) at retail. Over the years the latter has been a bit of a weakness as Windows gaming didn't have a clear platform champion (as do consoles), and I believe this should help support the retail PC market a great deal. Of course, don't forget the huge changes DirectX 10 will bring as well. I'll point you to Dave's post on that (including links to a great article on ExtremeTech).

Later I'll have to post some thoughts on the ramifications of Live Anywhere, our initiative to bring Xbox Live to Windows and other devices in the future. While not directly tied to Windows Vista, you'll begin seeing the tip of the iceberg as Live Anywhere games ship for Vista, and I think you'll be pretty excited what the future might bring there.