Achievement Unlocked: Watched TV

Microsoft has an opportunity to change the way we watch TV.

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if they add achievements for watching tv, I might finally break down and get one.

Gods no.

People watch tv in groups, sometimes dropping in and out of the room. The logistics behind making sure everyone who watches a program is logged into live when you watch a program is bad enough.

Achievements work for games because they are active in nature. Watching tv programs is just not the same thing. People don't want to worry about whether they're signed in before they watch their favourite show or whether they're disconnected so they can watch their guilty pleasure.

Socially connecting everything needs to stop. I don't want any newspaper article I read instantly posted to facebook and I don't want an achievement for watching 'Hercules' five times because my account is signed in when my wife and I babysit her god daughter.

Aside: As SteveyM said, content is king in these situations. I cancelled my netflix account after the first month when I found out the library for people in the UK was vastly inferior to the stateside equivalent. I was told psych was on netflix damn it.

Second aside: Why do we still have achievement 'points' any way, they have no value and there's no objective rating for difficulty of achievements vs their score. Do away with the arbitrary numbers and let people compare which achievements they got rather than a raw figure that means nothing.

Eleuthera:

And who wouldn't want to watch a documentary about radical Jewish gangs?

I know, right! When I read this, I was thinking how awesome it would be if a bunch of my friends were connected and could watch a documentary on radical Jewish gangs. That's right up our alley.

Although many great point were laid out, I have to disagree with the whole achievement for watching tv. I feel too much like this is a parody that someone now thinks would be a good idea. People already bitch about getting achievements for nothing, this would be the ultimate.

AJ Dellinger:
Microsoft needs to give people something they might want to spend real money on.

So you admit that nobody wants to spend real money on Xbox games.
*trollface*

then maybe I wouldn't set my status to "Appear Offline" while sitting with a pint of Ben and Jerry's in hand, muttering about how I wish Mal would just get with Inara already (too personal? Sorry).

My god, firefly is a soap opera for men.

Yay, more adverts. Great idea.

This is exactly the reason I don't watch TV, I'll stick to LoveFilm thanks.

This is an awesome article!
I am entrenched in telecom systems work in Canada. The major media companies (that offer cable TV, internet, phone, etc) such as Bell, Rogers and TELUS utilise a Microsoft solution in their TV offerings. For example, on the consumer side, those digital TV tuners have Windows CE as their OS; they also have MS solutions on the infrastructure and provisioning side.
The point I am driving to is that the ideas in the article could be easily sold to and integrated into the cable TV providers ensuring an easier adoption.
Good ideas!

Eleuthera:
And who wouldn't want to watch a documentary about radical Jewish gangs?

Depends. Are they radical gangs made of Jews, or radical Jews who have formed gangs?

DArkAbyssKeeper:
Gods no.
People watch tv in groups, sometimes dropping in and out of the room. The logistics behind making sure everyone who watches a program is logged into live when you watch a program is bad enough.
Achievements work for games because they are active in nature. Watching tv programs is just not the same thing. People don't want to worry about whether they're signed in before they watch their favourite show or whether they're disconnected so they can watch their guilty pleasure.
Socially connecting everything needs to stop. I don't want any newspaper article I read instantly posted to facebook and I don't want an achievement for watching 'Hercules' five times because my account is signed in when my wife and I babysit her god daughter.

OT: This. I don't want or need my television to be hooked up to my Live account, let alone my Facebook or anything else that identifies the real me. I will share what I want to share, and I am tired of having to tell companies, "No, DON'T share that! That is private, or something I will share with certain people at my discretion!" Zuckerberg and others needs to steal the idea of circles from G+, and not try and shove everything everyone does in the same space.

...Damn, seem to have digressed onto a rant. In short, I don't want Xbox to try and link everything together.

Achievement Unlocked: Watch ALL the Lost episodes back to back, and take a quiz and send it to Microsoft!

umm.. this is some kind of "modest proposal" parody of the absurdity of multimedia, right? because i cant see any other reason you would compare microsoft's plans to skynet then detail on 3 pages how to build a better skynet.

it has to be. a bunch of sound business ideas with detailed instructions that are fundamentally horrible things to do to humans. thats what this article is. achievements for watching TV? a party mode for watching shows? the only thing more absurd than those ideas is the fact that you people would eat it up like the beaten down orwellian fodder you are.

last i checked, we still think skynet is the villian in T2, right? why are there people, consumers and not just CEOs, supporting these ideas? can people really be so enslaved to their little iphones and facebooks that they actively want to be part of an operant conditioning money-sucking machine?