The Future of Avatars:
With the coming of the NXE was also the introduction of Xbox 360 avatars, also known as the little guy that represents an Xbox user virtually. These little people are essentially Microsoft’s version of the Nintendo Wii’s Miis. As promised at the press conference last year, you can now see avatars on the dashboard, your friends list, and a few games, including Uno Rush and A Kingdom for Keflings. Microsoft has also upheld its promise that clothing and accessories will be made available periodically so that people have new ways to customize their virtual selves. However, beyond a small handful of games and the dashboard, the avatars seem to have failed to make the impact Microsoft desired.
Accuracy: 95% (-5% just because they haven’t really done much with them)
What’s coming this year?: I expect that more avatar games will be announced and Microsoft will also tote the ones that failed to come out since last year, like 1 vs. 100. Considering avatars have been one of the most noticeable changes to the appearance of the Xbox dashboard, it would be hard for Microsoft to simply ignore. More talk of the still unreleased Xbox Live Prime Time might emerge out of avatar talk as well, considering it seems designed with avatars in mind.
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