Microsoft has started testing additions to the Xbox that refer to something called a “Career” system for Xbox Live. Xbox platform chief Mike Ybarra mentioned that the platform development team were working on extending the Gamerscore system in an interview with Windows Central. This Career system might be the addition he was talking about, and from what we know so far it looks like it may make Gamerscore, and spending a long time on one game more meaningful in the Xbox backend.
Thus far, Gamerscore has only reflected those who sought out and won achievements in a multitude of games. One of the changes Ybarra wants to make is a way to represent the accomplishments of esports players or those who intensely play a few titles instead of dabbling in a lot of them.
According to Windows Central, they’ve received documentation on the new Career feature that states players will be able to level up, prestige ranks, and earn rewards for doing so. One of the prizes will be loot crates which contain cosmetics for the new Avatars.
Career will come with Quests that require players to do specific things. There may be a quest to play a particular game, or something of the sort, and completing it will give you loot boxes and XP. The documentation doesn’t specify that loot boxes will be available via real currency, and hopefully, that’s the case because system-level microtransactions would be terrible.
The new subdomain for Careers will be career.xboxlive.com, though it hasn’t been made available to the general public yet. These new Career levels, XP, and loot boxes seem will be tracked alongside progress and playtime in your game library, but won’t replace the existing Gamerscore system. Even when Career is implemented into Xbox Live, you’ll still be able to get achievements as normal.
Whether or not Career is the extension to the Gamerscore system for Xbox that Ybarra was hinting at is unknown. However, it seems like too good of a fit for it not to have something to do with it. As of right now, the feature is in early development, and likely won’t premiere until sometime after the new Avatar system drops in early 2018.
