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.
