Rare: Avatar development started pre-Mii

I really don't like the look of the avatars, so it's unlikely I'll be partaking in the creation of one. Not so sure about the dashboard yet. I'm sure I'll come around.

Those avatars still makes Microsoft look like a douche...Approachable...pff... I thought Microsoft was 'hardcore'...not screaming children...O..Wait...

I'm with the 'I don't care either way' people. And I quite like the avatars.

Though I'm sure the internet will tell me that it's just my vagina talking.

agree. I could care less about personalization unless it's a character for a game (oblivion/rockband/etc). and I don't like crap that eats more of my harddrive space and causes longer boot-up times for consoles (not that they're all that long, but still).

just give me lots of awesome games.

I can believe someone had an idea for avatars before the Wii came along. I don't believe that if Nintendo hadn't made Miis (which I HATE) and had enormous success that MS would be introducing avatars right now. In other words, yeah they had the idea, there's all kinds of ideas floating around, but once they saw Ninty make it work they decided to follow suit.

Sorry Rare.I'm not believing it

I believe that statement. All I'm asking is these avatars have the option to put tattoos on. If it's supposed to resemble me in any way...

oh come on, i remember an interview with someone from xbox where when asked about avatars they said "well i didnt say we create the idea"

i wonder what velocity girl's avatar looks like?

I am against these until you can make them nude.... Or at least strip them down to their underwear and fight monsters a la Oblivion.

At least nipples, no nipple no avatars.

So they were working on a create-a-character program before the Wii came out? Who cares? They've had that feature in various forms for decades.

If they claim that their intention was to integrate it with the system and make them playable in multiple family-oriented games, then that would be a little suspect.

The characters themselves are old hat, the system integration was a direct response to the Wii. Microsoft is responsible for the copycatting, all Rare is responsible for is designing a feature that has already been in hundreds of games before.

No big deal.

Believing them or not is one thing. What I feel really doesn't matter, but my main problem with this situation is this:

If you saw someone beat you to the punch by over two years on an idea, that not only is a similar idea in concept but looks similar as well, would you release it?

Thing is, you'd think that they would worry about how this will be perceived by the public. If people got up in arms about Sony making motion controls right after Nintendo released them, Microsoft doing this 2 years later will definately be a magnet for sarcastic remarks.

So yea, them telling us they were first.. who cares honestly. It's about how the mainstream public who doesn't go to sites like this perceives it. And I can guarantee you everyone is going to call BS on them.

@Dave
How young and naive are you, also did your daddy beat you?

On topic, I do not care about who was the first or the last. Blizzard is the king of copying...and damn do they do it well and better then almost any other company out there. They make better games because it and on top of that we would not advance if we did not copy and improve upon an initial design.

As Pablo Picasso said "Bad artists copy, great artists steal."

On a side note, I am tired of Gamers having this one track malevolent, violent, and blood obsessed elitist perspective on how their games should be. By the way some gamers think, all of our games should be violent, bloody, and gray/low saturated graphics. Sorry, that is boring...games are about everyone and everything and you do not have to be a "bad-ass" in a game to have fun or be "cool." I am a 25 year old male who enjoys Call of Duty 4 just as much as I enjoy Viva Pinata or castle crushers or PixelJunk Monsters...etc.

Bottom line is why corner gamers into an angry teenage angst individuals who craves for violence, over masculine figures, and a bloody sword? I think it is about time gaming and gamers grew up. This is one direction that is help diversify our gaming experience and help mature the industry.

You can complain that how is a little cute Avatar maturing anything...well it is allowing for a wider audience and overall more acceptance which in turn leaves for maturity. Every type of medium before maturing had an elitist following (books, movies, etc.). This is the gaming industries time to mature.

The 360 was also the first console to use avatars, i.e. those little pictures you can use to represent yourself. The PS3 uses them as well (to a far lesser extent) and I'd be very surprised if Nintendo's ideas for the Mii's didn't come from that to begin with.

Microsoft, and many other companies also use 3D avatars like this for programs like MSN. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to believe they may have been working on something like that for the 360 before the Mii's came along.

But even if they weren't, who cares? Nintendo and Sony have copied an equal amount of things from Microsoft and from each other, so why does this make any difference?

Who cares PS3's Home will own these gay Mii rip offs.

This debate is pointless. Both ideas suck so it doesn't really matter who did it first

i hate it when people do this, "yea we thought of it first, but we just didnt think it was cool until so and so did it, now we want some of the cake too."

does it really matter who had the idea first anyway? i mean Mii's where obviously out first so idea in action > idea in head to me.

So basically, they where working on avatar like things for Grabbed by the Ghoulies 2 and Microsoft liked the idea and thought it'd help bring in more of the casual audience?

Makes sense to me.

I think Bas Rutten in GTA4's "The Men's Room" put it best...

"What's the point of having a virtual self if you can't hurt someone with it?"

And then he proceeded to make very violent gestures. ;]