Digital honour

Microsoft’s decision to boost the maximum XBOX Live Arcade achievement tally from 200 points to 400 points creates an interesting dilemma for multiplatform releases. Many games use the same unlock conditions for achievements and trophies across both platforms, but Sony has confirmed that it is not going to follow Microsoft’s lead. Not yet, anyway.

A spokesperson for the company told IGN:

There are plenty of downloadable games on PSN that currently offer platinum trophies.

The company continued that Sony has “a standard and consistent system to determine the trophies available for a particular game. The overall scope of the game determines the trophies available, not method of distribution”.

It’s going to be interesting to see how multiplatform developers respond to the change. While Sony sounds pretty bullish about its intentions, we imagine that the platform holder will allow multiplatform developers to maintain parity between XBOX Live Arcade and PSN releases. There would be uproar if identical titles ended up having more achievement “value” on XBLA than PSN.

[source uk.ps3.ign.com]