I stumbled upon this report from GameSpot that Microsoft patented television achievements to entice viewers to watch a particular show or season. Apparently it has been patented since November 2011 which leads me to believe that the vision for the Xbox One is set in stone for over a year now at least.

Here's the link: http://us.gamespot.com/news/microsoft-files-patent-for-television-achievements-6408924

What are your thoughts on this?

Every time I think MS has hit hit rock bottom, they keep digging further...

I think it's fun. Why not? It's like a little meta-game for watching tv. I'm gonna watch Game of Thrones anyway because I enjoy it - and if at the end of the episode an achievement pops BING "Need a hand?" (fans of the show might imagine what this would entail) that would be cool.

For those that think this is rock bottom or something, lighten up.

If you don't think this idea is genius, your a idiot.

"10 Gamerscore Watch 10 Season of Horders" "100 Gamerscore honey boo boo"

SOME Person will do that. The Meta game to the already time wasting activity of playing games comes to your TV.

I think this is a really stupid idea. I mean achievements in games work because you're actually doing something to earn them. You're not doing anything or interacting with anything when you're watching TV, you're just staring at a screen. Achievements were fine the way they were, I don't understand why Microsoft is making all of these changes.

I like the concept and could imagine pretty cool things done with achievements like that.

That being said, achievements are meaningless anyway. I guess that doesn't mean much coming from a guy with 95000 gamer score, but all they really are is a fun little distraction to entice you to play games longer than you normally would. Still, I am getting these achievements by doing things in game, earning achievements for watching TV just doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Achievements for watching TV wouldn't be a problem, can't see it making any difference one way or the other.

But I don't think that's what we are talking about here. It's all about the ads, no one watches adverts anymore, there's just too many breaks.

So what happens is anything I watch on tv I record, just so I can fast forward through the ads. Even if I want to watch something "live" I will wait for 10 or 15 minutes with it paused.

Obviously the advertisers won't pay the money if no one is watching the ads. But if there was say 100 Gamerscore for watching all the ads in a 2 hour programme then there's money to be made there.

It will devalue achievements though, but as they have no value anyway it hardly matters.

Are you really saying that because of one idea they had months ago and may not even act upon that does nothing but add a feature, albeit a pretty dumb one, means that Microsoft's going in a bad direction? Does that seem like maybe an overreaction to anyone? I like TV, I must also be a traitor to gamers everywhere.

@pythagreon I did not say it is a bad direction at all. I'm just saying that the vision for the Xbox One as an all-in-one set-top box has already been established as the brand strategy of Microsoft at least since last year.

Can I get all 1000 gamerscore in the first 2 minutes of an episode of the Avatar The Last Airbender cartoon?

Wasn't this already discussed in another thread? And again, just becuase they patented something doesn't mean they ever intend to implement it, it just means someone in their R&D department had an idea.

I think it's awesome. I think the achievements won't simply be "watch this" but they'll deal more with interacting with the shows which is what's exciting about the One and Kinect 2.0 in the first place.

Wow, this is horrible! The only reason I've reduced my game time to watch more TV was to wait to see what the Xbox One was going to offer & now it looks like the PC will be my gaming system of choice now. I wouldn't want some achievement system giving me rewards because I watched Game of Thrones...how is that a reward anyway? Although since GB removed their global achievement tracking system, the whole point of achievements have completely diminished in value for me. :(

So we have come full circle now, have we. From non interactive tv, to interactive tv, "video games" and now back to tv.