The developer given the task of unleashing Xbox 360’s Avatars to the world has revealed that they in fact already had the idea in mind for the console’s launch.
Mark Betteridge, Rare’s studio manager, says they had the idea already for the new ”more smooth and friendly” Xbox 360, after the ”hardcore and spiky” first one.
”The concept of avatars is something that we came up with about four years ago now. We were thinking about how hardcore and spiky the previous Xbox was, and everybody was of a view that the new one was going to be more smooth and friendly,” said Betteridge in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz. ”Everybody was in agreement that was the right thing.”
”So we pitched avatars as something out of the box with an interface where you build a character that looks like yourself, or whoever you want it to look like, and can play mini-games and things like that - but it represents you on the Live system, that’s all it was based around.”
He also revealed that Rare intends to keep their hands firmly grasped around the 360 Avatars as a lot of third party developers have shown a keen interest.
”As standalone avatar products, we want to own that space, because we think it’s a huge, huge space going forward - it appeals across genres, across age ranges, demographics, and there’s an enormous opportunity there,” he explained.
Click here to read the full interview between Mark Betteridge and GamesIndustry.biz.
