Are you annoyed that Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II only came with 705 Gamerpoints when it first hit retail outlets? Would you like to earn more than 200 Gamerpoints with every Arcade title? Well, Microsoft have laid out changes to the Achievement system which means both of the examples become redundant; the changes allow Arcade games to have 50 extra points, for example, as well as better news for full retail games.

It’s no secret as to how big the Achievement and Gamerscore system has become. With sites that improve your Gamerscore for you to make you look better (at a stupid price), Gamerpoints have become something of an image to many. And when the number 1 guy in the world attempted to sell his Gamertag, the bidding was extreme (until fake bids ruined it). Which is why Microsoft feel changes are needed. The new policies are below.

• 1. All regular disc-based games MUST have 1,000 Gamerscore in the base game. This means that any consumer who buys a retail game will have the opportunity to unlock the full 1,000 Gamerscore without having to pay for any add-on content. Note that a publisher may decide to deliver a portion of this Gamerscore via add-on content, but the add-on content will always be free to the consumer.
• 2. Game publishers will have the option to deliver another 250 incremental Gamerscore on top of the 1,000 via add-on content from Marketplace. This add-on content could be either free or paid. So if you complete a game and earn the full 1,000 GS, you could by getting new add-on content earn up to a total of 1,250 points from a game.
• 3. Xbox Live Arcade games will operate in similar fashion, but given the size of these titles they will allow you to earn up to 200 Gamerscore from every game and up to another 50 points from add-on content.

This all sounds great in theory, but seems to suggest that Microsoft are encouraging more developers and publishers to bring in Downloadable Content at a price, effectively making you pay for additional Gamerscore if you want it. Yes you may have already paid the £40 for the 1000 Points, but do you want to pay up to £15 for an extra 250 Points? They could charge as much as they want in theory, since I doubt there is a price limit (be wary of any DLC for Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 then, if the last one is anything to go by).

But what about the content itself? Could any old tat get released that you have to pay for to get the achievements, or is there a certain amount of content that has to be included before adding the Gamerscore? It would be nice of Microsoft to protect the consumer and ensure that developers and publishers had to include a certain amount of content in the DLC to make it worthy of a buy before charging for Gamerscore. However this was not mentioned, and so we can only hope that we as the consumer don’t get ripped off. Oblivion is a good example of something that deseves a few extra Gamerpoints, and I’m sure that will happen with the Shivering Isles update now.

How do you feel about this? Is it making the situation better, or just another excuse to make us pay more for our games? Let it all out in the comments section below.