Microsoft Want To Give You Achievements For Watching TV

Microsoft have filed a patent for television achievements, effectively rewarding people for doing nothing.

With the Xbox One’s desire to be a singular living room entertainment device combining gaming and television, the move is a natural fit.

Rewarding people for watching select television shows and, more importantly, adverts that generate revenue for publishers, studios and Microsoft is also a natural fit with their current philosophy.

Applied for last November (and reported on by GameIndustry.biz the patent only became public now.

It reads: “Television viewing tends to be a passive experience for a viewer, without many opportunities for the viewer to engage or have interactive experiences with the presented content. To increase interactive viewing and encourage a user to watch one or more particular items of video content, awards and achievements may be tied to those items of video content.”

Interactive television? Someone should take this a step further, maybe invent a format that allows people to vote on things and influence the show.

Why stop there? You could even create an interactive TV show where people can control a lead character and act out the story themselves in their own way.

Sigh