Xbox Live Avatar

From RWP Wiki

Avatars are a feature of Xbox Live which allows players to create cartoony human characters representing themselves. The Avatars were developed by Rare for the Xbox 360.

Details

The Avatars can be customized with different clothing, hair styles and colors, skin colors and tones, facial expression, and props (which they will interact with). Users have the ability to make a gamerpicture using their created Avatar. If a user's Avatar is not set as their gamerpic, then their Avatar can only be seen by friends. The customization is such that it is fairly easy to make the Avatar look precisely how the user wants. When a user is not online, their Avatar designates this by sleeping. The Avatars can be compared to the cartoony Mii avatars used for Nintendo's Wii, and the more realistic avatars used for the Home service on Sony's PlayStation 3.

In Xbox Live Parties, Avatars can be used to message and wave to others in the Party. Special clothes and other objects are added sometimes for occasions such as the release week of The Lost and the Damned expansion for Grand Theft Auto IV, during which clothes such as biker jackets were added to celebrate the release.

Several titles, such as Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing with Banjo-Kazooie, give users the ability to play as their avatar in-game. The first Rare game to use Avatars as the primary characters is Kinect Sports.