Xbox achievements improvements hinted at by Phil Spencer

It’s been a long time since Microsoft has made any changes to the Xbox achievement system (at least on the user side anyway), but it sounds like improvements to achievements could finally be on the horizon.

In a wide-ranging interview with Windows Central, Xbox boss Phil Spencer touched on what innovations Microsoft has in store for Xbox, mentioning hardware, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and, interestingly, Xbox achievements.

“There’s a roadmap of those things coming as well. There’s a hardware roadmap, there’s a service roadmap, maybe there’s even a roadmap for improvements to Xbox achievements, which I know is something that you and many others care about,” Spencer said.

It’s unknown what “improvements to Xbox achievements” Spencer might be hinting at here. There have been rumors — for a very long time now, I might add — about Xbox potentially creating an achievement equivalent to PlayStation’s platinum trophy, though nothing has ever materialized.

Back in November 2021, VP of Xbox gaming devices and ecosystem Jason Ronald said that Xbox achievements were “top of mind” for Team Xbox, seemingly making them out to be a priority, but still, nothing changed on the user side.

We have seen Xbox make some changes, though, albeit behind the scenes. Back in May, Xbox introduced changes to Xbox achievement rules in an attempt to stop easy Gamerscore titles that can be completed in just a few minutes from flooding the Xbox store. While this has sort of worked, there are still some developers pushing these rules to their absolute limits, especially when it comes to title updates. It will be interesting to see if Xbox will also further tighten these rules if it does make user-side improvements in the future.

What do you think? What improvements would you like Xbox to make to the achievements system? Do you want an equivalent to a Platinum trophy? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments.