Xbox Woot: Xbox 360 Games and News

Talking for the GameFest event in Seattle, Microsoft’s Cameron Egbert and Dan Kroymann discussed the development of avatars for Xbox 360. They revealed in-depth details on the practicality of the new features. Egbert who is a software development engineer for XNA showed his GameCard saying that it doesn’t say a lot about himself.

Then he showed the 3D avatar which will be used in Xbox this year. He noted that it shows who he is; he further explained that “avatars are a new identity for gamers”. It provides you with a presence that was not available with the Xbox Live. In addition, this is ubiquitous on the entire system so you can use it for your UI, your characters, and for other functions.  

This technology should enable game creators to use different avatars in games, create certain avatars to be used in a similar way everyday, and use metadata. Egbert explained about the technical specifications of avatars “animation in avatars is done through two methods.” The first method includes creating the skeletal framework and the second method involves facial animation.