Xbox Is Making Big Changes To Avatars In January 2025

That's just stupid. I guess I'll take a picture and use that.

I get not supporting it anymore but pulling it completely? That feels like more effort than just "keeping the lights on".

That sucks. I guess I will take a pic of mine.

I guess it's time to take a picture of my avatar to save it before this goes away.

Loved the avatar in the 360 era but these days me
and my friends pretty much use our real pictures or something funny pulled from the internet

@somnambulance Me too, I thought the 360 ones were the only ones! No wonder it has low engagement, lots of customers don't even know it exists!

I had always hoped they would bring back thinks like Avatar Awards ala 360. But like most things, they floundered.

The problem is that the Avatars and the editor are well too hidden on the Xbox One and Series S/X. As much as I love the Xbox one and Series X. It's missing too many cool features the 360 had. Like seriously what happened to custom soundtracks.

Also the Xbox Series X needs some dashboard music.

Microsoft: buries avatars after Xbox 360 and never highlights them or utilizes them in anything
Also Microsoft: "Nobody uses avatars so since you don't use them we're discontinuing them completely."

But aren't they all about preservation? Lol

@Arcticpandapopz You can still do custom soundtrack basically by playing Spotify in the background and adjusting the volume.
Like right now I'm playing Diablo while listening to a metal playlist.

Avatars were a waste of time from day one. Honestly, if it means Microsoft will focus on something less useless, then bin 'em off.

If they wanted to make Xbox feel like a big community ecosystem and all that metaverse stuff (maybe they don't anymore), Avatars would have been a big part of that. Would've been cool if we saw more stuff like that year in a review from a while back which was like a virtual museum for your profile. I could have seen stuff like a whole cloud based life sim with your Xbox avatar to buy cosmetics, pets from games, talk with friends, trade stuff, and whatever. Xbox has more than the means, but it'd be an investment and it seems like they don't super care about all that stuff anymore. Which is interesting because it was all the rage not that long ago. When they first announced ABK, every other article I saw was about how they could CREATE THE METAVERSE BEFORE META 😂.

Darn it, I liked using this.

I personally never really liked the newer avatars. I prefer the 360 ones to be honest, glad they are sticking around.

I use them and friends of mine do, but it's exactly what another user said above, buried and never highlighted. I will take a photo, then. They are actually really cool and made by Rare. Nintendo would have put them on your face like on Wii, 3DS and Wii U, but after that they abandoned the Miis, that were ugly and had no arms. Well, they use a new version now for The Legend of Zelda characters.

I have never created an avatar on Xbox.

I was really excited for these when it was first announced. I foolishly thought Microsoft might DO something with them, like in the 360 era. Not even close.

And then I was looking at what Nintendo was doing at the time with the Miis (the 3DS was still around at that point) and hoping Xbox was going to compete with that, and wow... my expectations were way too high for the absolute nothingness Xbox had planned with them.

@Banjo- miis had arms on the wii, and theyre still on the switch

Good bloody riddance! The 360 Avatars still look a lot better than the ugly new ones anyway.

@Fishticon I do that but it's not the same. On the 360 in a lot of games it replaced the games music and just handled it much better. Plus I don't want to have to give Spotify money when I already have a large music collection.

@nomither6 Miis don't have arms on Wii, at least in the games I have played, e.g. Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort. I didn't say that the Switch doesn't have Miis, but that Nintendo abandoned them. They are no longer mandatory. Many Wii games force you to choose a default Mii if you don't have any. I don't have any of the Mii games for Switch, but I guess that they are mandatory in Nintendo Switch Sports. They are a rare thing on Switch.

Understandable why they're not retiring the XBOX 360 Avatar program, since there's dozens of games which use it in some way that are part of the BC program.

Meanwhile, they never found a use for them the same way on XBOX One, so... Poof.

@Arcticpandapopz Xbox One also had that feature in some games like Forza Horizon 3 using Groove Music that allowed you to play your own collection on the cloud for free, but it was shut down. Unfortunately, if you play a CD on Xbox, the only console that is able to do that in 2024, and you open a game, the CD is paused. It would be cool if it kept playing.

@Banjo- that’s just in the some of the games yeah they’re arms are missing , but in the actual mini channel where you create a mii, they have arms

@nomither6 Conclusion: Miis were born with arms and Nintendo mutilated them. 🤣

@Banjo- lol i don’t think nintendo mutilated them any worse than the custom mii’s you’d see online 😂

@nomither6 Do you remember we were able to download them on Wii? Some were good, like certain Wario Mii. 😁 Today's Nintendo is much more restrictive.

They can't just leave it alone and leave it at that? This is just like with Xbox Fitness, it's not enough for them to stop supporting something, they have to take it away from people who actually like it.

I don't use the new avatars but it's completely to do that to people who actually do.

@Banjo- yup i remember it all! that generation was a big part of my life growing up & you're right about nintendo being restrictive now. the switch is so barren compared to how much the wii/u had. plus no backwards compatibility.

but its nintendo - they get a pass with everything & can do no wrong. they could regress back to the 90s(theyre pretty close anyway LOL) and people wouldnt care.

@nomither6 I couldn't agree more.

I personally don't know why they needed whole new avatars for the x1 when they could of just used the original x360 avatars. And the problem was that the avatars on the x1 and later consoles served no purpose and were never used for anything, at least to my knowledge.

Ok. It's actually not that surprising, since those Avatars have no use anymore. I recently made my Avatar look a bit better, so it was no use.
It's kinda sad, that XBox is losing more and more individuality.
I remember a time on XBox 360, where they really started a family campaign, party games and those 360 avatars, which could be used in several games.
Nothing of that is anymore, it's just "this Gamepass" console today.

@RadioHedgeFund you're absolutely right. No matter how good I edit my XOne avatar, it looks weird. I'm a not a skinny guy and I'm wider around shoulders and chest. But when I do that to the avatar, he has fat legs. 😅 Also those face expressions don't look good.

I liked using it also, my daughter as well.
Microsoft is become like Google, where it starts projects, gives us nice things, then removes them out of nowhere. Boy do I hate that practice. Thus why I don't use almost any Google product but Xbox/Microsoft is doing the same now with a few things. I don't trust any of them anymore.

@nomither6 I have the same thoughts. The Nintendo Switch is so barren compared to the Wii U and I've used that sentence before as well numerous times . The Wii U was a superior machine in almost every way, from comfort of using the pad to the amount of features it has (camera, stylus, etc.) to the home screen, music, and software. The Switch only has very few benefits over it.

Another cut and run product trust you earn #hard.

It has low engagement because you people at Xbox have buried the feature and gave it nothing to be used on. Unlike 360 where we had virtual theatres plenty of games and later Kinect. You're letting Xbox become as corpo as the parent company.

@Ramouz even the original wii has more features with all the apps/channels & the cool mods you could do to it. plus the original wii was backwards compatible & you could also play every era of nintendo on it at the time + free online & various controllers to play with it like the GC , classic, wii mote, or wii mote & nunchuk , and pro controller

@nomither6 - True. My daughter just played some Wii this morning. Lots of superb games waiting to be ported lol (Fishing Resort, MySims Agents, and a looot more).

They really started restricting a lot now, even though they make a lot of money and profit. It's a shame. Ever since the Switch came out and seeing the layout in games and the Switch, I started noticing and telling others how "corporate" it feels. Never saw such layouts in Mario Party and other games like the Switch's versions. They looked so corporate-like. Things I saw while working in the government here in Canada in the past. And, some of the sounds, like "You got a star" felt like an announcement at an airport.

Nintendo went from playful and happy to serious and corporate-like.

@Fragslayer Same thing Nintendo is doing with trying to phase out and hide Mii characters. Wii was spectacular with that. I don't know why they're removing those.

But maybe what @xboxjapanfan says is true. Their removal of genders and mixing characters and accessories together is pathetic, evil and makes no logical sense.

People in charge of large corporations always end up ruining everything, especially when they're bought.

@Ramouz i couldn’t agree more. it’s a breath of fresh air knowing that theres someone in the corporate space such as yourself that’s still in touch with their inner child & can see when things become “too formal”

I thought these went with the 360, I can't remember the last time I saw them

I mean I set mine up, and then it never really appeared in any part of the experience. I'm not surprised it's being canned.

Good riddance. I always hated they prioritized it over a selfie or a pic of your choosing.