Let me explain some of the reasoning behind the 360 achievements this time round. When we designed the achievements for PGR3 (an Xbox 360 launch title) we didn't really know how the system would work, or how popular they'd become!! Although we had a good stab at them compared to other launch titles, there are a few things we changed for PGR4.

On PGR3 we gave too many points out for 'hard' achievements. Here's a little stat for you platinum players to brag about - how many people completed PGR3 on platinum? 20%?..... 15%?.....5%?

Answer = 0.76%

So remember when you think the Platinums in PGR3 were too easy, you're well within the top 1% of PGR players! Even if you're a mere gold player, only 2.95% of players completed PGR3 on gold! The numbers for Silver, Bronze and Steel were much higher. This really shocked us, as we thought most players played the game on silver and gold when actually the vast majority of gamers were playing on silver, bronze and steel. This also meant that the vast majority of players were completing PGR and earning hardly any gamerscore. Players were putting in 15 hours plus of effort and coming out with 200-300 gamerpoints! So for PGR4 we decided we'd give out more points for the 'easier' achievements, as we know you hardcore gamers will play just to earn the achievement badge itself.

We also wanted our achievements to be fun and less based on milestones like 'number of races won', kudos score etc. We wanted a set of achievements that appealed to the four broad gamertypes on Xbox Live (you may have seen this before)

1. Achievers - Players that play games to completion, at the hardest difficulty they can. Give them a target, they'll beat it. Give them 120 cars to collect, they'll collect them!
2. Killers - Players that play games to beat people online. Trueskill is their king!
3. Explorers - Players that play a game until they've seen everything in the game. They love finding 'secret' things and don't really care about finishing the game on hard
4. Socialisers - Players that love the social elements of online gaming, and just having fun playing casually.

Traditionally 360 achievements have tended to cater for the Achiever and Killer gamertypes. In PGR4 we're still catering for these sorts of people, but also giving out achievements that suit Explorers and Socialisers. So you'll see 'secret' achievements that need so detective work to find out, achievements for sharing photos online or getting all players in a lobby to do a jump at the same time, along with the usual 'Get a platinum medal' type achievements. So hopefully there will be something for everyone, and a few more players will get to that 1000 gamerpoints goal than the tiny fraction that did in PGR3!