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Update []:

Sony’s Platinum Trophy is old enough to vote (and legally drink at a Wetherspoons here in the UK), but Xbox has finally got around to borrowing the idea.

While PlayStation stole Microsoft’s homework with its achievements system, it’s taken the Team in Green an enormous 18 years to add its own Platinum Trophy alternative: Mythics.

Xbox Begins Testing Its Platinum Trophy Alternative, 18 Years After Sony Introduced System 2

This is being billed by the Redmond firm as one of the “most requested features” in the format’s history, and it works exactly as you’d expect it to: earn all of the achievements in a game (excluding DLC and updates) and you’ll be eligible for a Mythic.

It’s retroactive so if you’ve been playing on Microsoft’s machines for years, you’re probably about to get a big dopamine rush.

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The feature’s only available to Xbox Insiders right now – beta testers, in other words – but will roll out to everyone in the not-too distant future.

Welcome to the party, folks – now you too can obsess over that one goddamn Trophy preventing you from getting the freakin’ Platinum! (Or Mythic in this instance, obvs.)

Original Story: Look, there’s no way of revising history: Trophies were developed as a response to the Xbox 360’s achievements.

The popularity of the feature clearly caught Sony cold, and it wasn’t until 2008 that it was able to introduce its own system on the PS3, starting with Super Stardust HD.

It’d take a while before Trophies became mandated, but they’ve become a phenomenon ever since. Many people enjoy working towards Platinums and sharing their, er, achievements with friends.

I personally have always preferred the Trophy format, because it both documents how much you play (overall Trophy total) and whether you’re a completionist or not (overall Platinum total).

For example, it’s possible to have lots of Trophies because you play a lot of games but very few Platinums because you don’t 100% them, and vice versa.

On the Xbox, everything is funneled into a single Gamerscore, which I think communicates less and is inferior to Sony’s solution.

But new CEO Asha Sharma, continuing her goodwill crusade, has confirmed that Xbox will copy the Platinum Trophy at some point later this year.

Asked on social media about this specifically, she said: “[The] team is working on something for later this year!”

Exactly what format it will take remains to be seen, but I wonder whether adding something like this so late in the day will really add much – unless it’s retroactive, I suppose.

Obviously there are tens of thousands of games already available on Xbox without a “Platinum” Trophy, so it’s going to take a long time to build up importance if it doesn’t apply to existing games.

Anyway, there you have it: Sony copied Xbox by adding its own version of achievements, now Xbox is copying Sony by adding its own version of Platinum Trophies.

[source x.com]