spudzdk

Good point.  And yeah that would be a cheap shot from the publishers but obviously something they would go for.
 
To me though the act of having fun playing the game on its own merit is only slightly more important than the act of sharing mutual experiences with friends be they RL or online. The actual number of your gamer score not really being the goal but rather which achievements have built up said score as well as the "where were you when friend X did something in game Y". More achivements in my games would though probably make me spend an hour or two more in a game in order to complete it thus actually, in a sense giving me more bang for my buck without necesarily turning me into a wannabe achivement whore going for your mentioned 10,000 hidden objects. I might be in the minority in this ofcourse and most "gamers" might just be interested in the score as an epeen. 
Still I feel, achievements only has the power you give them and I have to admit I am not too experienced in achivement distribution reasonable vs. your example is since I don´t own that console. But are the developers and publishers not already doing this with the games if they want?

The lack of a persistent, unified and collected achivement system on the PC is appalling. Sure Steam has some achievements but including achivements in your game is not mandatory so most don´t bother. Even games who has achivements on their 360 counterskrew(!?) I think we can all agree on Games for Windows Live not at all being up to snuff on game catalogue nor application quality and design. What is wrong with them? How hard is it to "copy" the already very successful Xbox Live system? Why does the GFWL client make so little sense when the company making it has already proven it knows a thing or two about online game communities on their console? I mean, our GFWL ID is in actuality already an Xbox Live ID already so what is the problem?
 
And now Blizzard is going to start sporting their own achivement junctions for only their own games. I thank whatever maker there might or might not be for Giantbomb and their efforts to unify all these in one place. 
 
It´s not that I am a huge fan of Microsoft or Apple or Sony or Valve or anything, but I feel by now if the PC wants to be a viable game platform, not just in the future but in a sense in the present too, we have to have the same sorts of unifying community systems in place as the consoles has. Either Steam learn some tricks from GFWL or vice versa. I don´t care (except Steam games are more expensive than Direct2Drive games, at least in Europe) as long as we get such a system that unifies PC game enthusiasts.   

Such a system might even alleviate some of the piracy issues. At least from the people who cares about achivements and bragging rights. Sure it might move us towards an end to games beingg played offline at least with achievements activated. Personally I would love to have more achivements in PC games. Might make me spend more time on the games I buy or even buy more games. 
 
Giantbomb, you seem to have figured this stuff out. Can´t you beat some sort of sense into their heads? :p