The Value of Achievements in Video Games

Since the seventh generation of video game consoles, Trophies and Achievements have become a notable part of how a segment of people play games. That doesn’t apply to everyone, and a lot of gamers would tell you that they’re absolutely meaningless and deserve no attention whatsoever. It’s obvious, however, that they’ve made enough of an impression on the video game scene to prompt discussions about the lack of an Achievement system on Nintendo‘s most recent console, the Nintendo Switch, being one of a number of missteps the Japanese hardware developer took with the launch of the console/handheld hybrid.

The Console Wars: A Brief History of the Video Game Industry

Peter Moore recently spoke about the benefits of competition between console developers. Around the same time, Shigeru Miyamoto said he felt Nintendo is a “genre of its own“, probably referring to not only the lighthearted spirit of a great majority of Nintendo games but also the Japanese giant’s deviation from the general market of video games. While both are correct in their respective statements, there is much more to pay attention to than just whether there is competition or not – history has taught us that much. While gaming technology progresses on a well-meditated track, there is a lot that could go wrong for any single one of the big developers, and it takes a lot of business savvy as well as a predictable market situation to keep things on that track. To get a better view of how balanced things actually are at the moment, let’s take a look back a few decades.