Microsoft made Todd Howard his own Xbox game to celebrate his lifetime achievement award

An image illustration of Bethesda's Todd Howard before the Starfield. — (Image credit: Future)

Bethesda studio head Todd Howard has an Xbox game made just for him, and it exists solely to award both the easiest and the hardest 1,000 Achievement Points out there.

Howard revealed his unusual distinction in a blog post where he discussed the long relationship between his studio, the developer of games such as Skyrim and Fallout 4, and new Bethesda owner Microsoft. It all started with an offhand joke during his acceptance speech for the Lifetime Achievement Award at GDC 2016...

"When I received the Lifetime Achievement Award at GDC, I joked in my acceptance 'I wonder how many achievement points this one is worth?' At the end of the ceremony, some good friends from Microsoft congratulated me and said they'd find out," Howard explained. "A few months later I was given a code to a game they had created, named after me and locked to my account. When ran, it unlocks a single achievement - 'Lifetime - 1000pts.' It still sits in my list when I check, and I smile every time."

So they're the easiest 1,000 Achievement points ever in the sense that you literally only need to open the game to get them, but they're also the hardest, in that you need to lead one of the biggest video game studios in the business for roughly two decades to get them. Maybe just stick to Rare Replay if you're going for pure cheevo efficiency.

Howard said that both Bethesda and Microsoft "share a deep belief in the fundamental power of games" and the fact that everyone should be able to play, regardless of what screen or controller you use. That's going to be especially true once all of Bethesda's new games start going live on Xbox Game Pass as soon as they launch.

You won't have to wait much longer to get your Xbox Series X pre-order in.