With Microsoft’s recent announcement of including avatars as a core point of the new “Xbox experience”, all three consoles now have some sort of avatar system in place designed to virtually represent gamers in their on-screen.

So what does this mean? Let’s examine the pros and cons of each system.




Nintendo’s Mii

Nintendo was the first company to introduce avatars with their Mii system, built into the console since launch. The system is fairly barebones, only allowing users to customize their face and color clothing, as well as providing sliders for height and weight. For the most part, Miis aren’t very graphically stunning, partly due to the art direction (the faces look like balloons with stickers on them) and partly due to the technical capabilities of the Wii.

Nintendo has enabled Miis to be utilized in a number of games. In Wii Sports, the avatars are used to perform actions in the game and Miis also appear in MarioKart to cheer you on or even race against Mario and friends. In Wii Fit, your Mii’s physical status corresponds with your progress throughout the “game”. Overall, the philosophy behind Miis is to allow the player to forge a connection with the game, rather than with other players online (as we’ll see later). The player wants to be able to recognize him or herself on screen, rather than have other people recognize them.

The simplicity of the Mii system is both an asset and a hindrance. As demonstrated by the Wii’s explosive sales records, many consumers are finding it easy to pick up and create their virtual representation in seconds, but the Wii’s anemic storage issues prevent Nintendo from adding more features to the system- though they probably would not even if they could. Because of this, the system will probably never change or expand beyond a simplistic character replacement.




PlayStation’s Home

Announced at GDC 2007, Home is Sony’s own take on an avatar-centric system. At just a glance, it is apparent that Home is a much more robust style of representing one’s self within a virtual world. True to its name, Home allows users to not only create an avatar and customize clothing and other details, but also gives players a virtual living space to customize with furniture, TVs (Sony-branded, of course), and other amenities. Users can walk around in the game world and interact with other users. This is in stark contrast to the Mii system. While the Mii is a means of communicating with their real-life counterpart, a Home avatar is meant to allow other users to interact with each other.

Home opts for a more hyperrealistic look to avatars, with sculpted facial features and actual hands instead of fingerless, beige spheres. Because every PS3 comes with a hard drive, this opens up the avenue of downloadable content. I have no doubt that there will be DLC, both free and for a fee, made available to Home users in order to customize their avatars and living spaces.

While some of the details on Home are still mysterious, Sony has marketed it as an online meeting ground for watching videos or even planning before an online match. Games such as WarHawk and Resistance will allow avatars to walk around within game-specific environments. The question that most gamers have to answer for themselves is whether meeting up online in avatar form is worth the effort and whether or not opening themselves up to the entire PlayStation user base is useful feature.




Microsoft’s Avatar

Never one to feel left out, Microsoft just introduced an avatar system at the past E3, tied into their whole rhetoric of a new “Xbox experience”. In essence, it appears to be a hybrid of both Miis and PlayStation Home. It’s Mii-ish in that the artistic style of the avatars is more toned down and they can be used within games like Uno Rush. The system is Home-ish inn that the clothing and appearance are fully customizable, so that when players jump into a Live party, they are recognizable to other users and key to online interaction.

It’s highly likely that many pieces of Microsoft’s avatar system will almost go down Microtransaction Road (which intersects with Walletrape Junction). An interview with the avatar designers at Rare – yes, that Rare – revealed that they hope to introduce seasonal content based on current trends. Yay?




There’s no direct formula for calculating which avatar system is best. It really all depends on the experience that users want. If you want to see yourself in a game, a Mii is probably your best bet. If you want to use your avatars as a means of communicating your image to others, the PS3 or Xbox Live systems are probably optimal. Each one offers a unique skew on the system. Heck, most gamers don’t seem to be too keen on any type of avatar.

But, hey, at least these avatars can’t become sexual deviants like they can in Second Life…. I hope.


So which system appeals to you?