So...I was perusing the new SmartGlass app for Xbox One in anticipation of Friday's launch and the arrival of my console, and upon clicking on the Achievements tab, I was greeted by a section containing "Featured Challenges". These would appear to be achievements with a specific expiration date attached. For instance, there's one for Madden 25 that expires in 16 days called "I Was There" that is earned for completing one game of football in the two week launch window. What are your thoughts on this sort of thing? What does this do for the Cheevo nuts?

Personally, I think it's interesting and fun, but how about the rest of you? Thoughts?

As a completionist, I would probably be annoyed if achievements were my thing. Especially if it was generally just a transparent play to boost sales during launch week.

I like it. They basically took Giant Bomb's old achievement system and added it to videogames. Sounds good to me.

It wouldn't affect me if I were planning to get a X1. I suppose it's a creative way to get more people to play a game at launch but it just seems like a cheap way to do it. I wonder if they count used copies of games though.

I think those are probably the additional achievements that developers can add on top of the standard 1000.

I like the idea a lot. They can add special achievements to coincide with pretty much anything they want. For example when the superbowl comes around, they might add one for playing a game with the teams that are playing. That's an obvious example, but it's easy to see where the system can go.

I'm sure Microsoft has their own set of rules concerning how these are handled. Don't want it to get completely out of hand.

It has nothing to do with launch specifically. They can add achievements over the life of a game as they see fit.

Weekly challenges, monthly or other time based achievements could give people something to do as developers find something specific in their games. Seems like a great system for open world games. You never know what people manage to do. If the developers find a specific action that players are doing, they can make an achievement for it.

For people who care about achievements, it's seems like a smart way to ensure they keep those games around.

And Sony took the whole rarity thing.

It's just stupid, but for the most part achievements are also stupid (only exceptionally challenging ones being worthwhile).

@syed117: EA is kind of already doing the "Super Bowl" idea, but with NBA Live (awful looking game, but I digress) - "12 Games of Christmas" (the NBA has a tradition of great Xmas day games) - win 12 games of Head-to-Head online by Christmas.

Also, I think these are "additional" Achievements that don't count toward the completion of the game, as they have 0G attached/displayed. And it appears as though many of EA's also unlock additional game content (skins, etc)...so there's that bonus, too.

It's lame and smart. It depends on the approach game developers take with it.
I would think it would be lame for players who want to get 100% achievements. It would suck picking up a game 1 month later realizing that you can't get x achievement because it was only available 1 week after launch day or something like that. However, on the flip side, it would be interesting to see if developers can utilize this. For holidays, Santa can be included along with any other holiday figures. In such a game like GTA, you get a 1 time achievement throughout the month of December for killing Saint Nick. Doing so, will unlock a gta santa hat or something similar. That would be a neat system that would sure to make me check back into whatever game it is, once in a while.

Exactly. It's great to see that both of them are learning from the best.

Basically, in no exaggerated terms, you can thank Giant Bomb for next gen.

So going from Xbox 360 to PS4, I basically started over on trophies/achievements, and since I haven't bothered to look at my trophies list on my PS4, I find I'm playing games as I want to instead of purposefully going out of my way to get some stupid achievement and man, IT IS GREAT! I'm playing games how I want and because I want to, so this whole timed achievement thing doesn't affect me because I'm at a point where I don't care.

Sounds like the sort thing that will drive some people crazy.

I am not one of those people.

I think it does exactly what's probably meant to do, which is make Cheevo hunters want to play new games close to release.

Smart yet irksome to a completionist like myself who has gotten acclimated to deeply discounted Digital Sales. Can't blame them though, they've got to make money and this is a minor way to add value to buying a game at release.

@truthtellah: Somebody's got to move this industry forward.

@oginor: they could be cool but I'm not playing those EA games on the list, lol

That'd be exciting. Why not?!

Seems like a good way to get me to stop worrying about achievements, so I support it.

Seems like a good idea......until you get to a game late.

Then you just feel cheated. I can see gamerscore people(do they still exist) having a fit with this new system.

So that is why they both put features behind a pay wall?!?!?!?

THANKS GIANT BOMB! >:(

There are quite a lot of achievements on the 360 that are literally impossible to get anymore (online achievements for games with no more online), this is no different than that.

Those are challenges. They are outside the games allotted 1000 gamerscore and are counted separately. I don't think actual achievements are allowed to be timed like that. The only thing that can make them impossible is multiplayer achievements for games with no servers anymore and bugged achievements that weren't fixed.