Microsoft hiring creative director for new Xbox Avatars studio

By Asher Madan
published

Xbox Avatars should be even better going forward.

New Xbox Avatars are on the horizon and it seems like Microsoft wants to expand their scope this time around. According to a new job listing on Indeed, the company is looking for a new creative director who will bring them to various platforms like Windows Mixed Reality.

Aside from listing responsibilities and qualifications, the post said the following.

Microsoft is looking for a passionate and talented Creative Director for our new Studio responsible for delivering Microsoft Avatars across all our platforms, from Xbox through to the Modern Workplace. If you have a yearning to create the future for all our digital selves, through a range of characters and styles, and you have ability to lead a team to produce stunning, high quality, real time interactive 3D embodiments, we would like to talk to you.You need to have deep empathy for the end user experience, while designing for a service and platform that scales across a wide set of endpoints, developers and teams integrating with Avatars. We are very proud of what we've done so far with Avatars over the past 10 years, but we're just getting started and searching for a Creative Director to join the team as we focus on Mixed Reality.

It's great to see Microsoft's commitment to Xbox Avatars, but many may fault this dedication due to the lack of new single-player first-party exclusives on Xbox One. Hopefully the company is investing in all of these experiences rather than just this.

We don't know when the new Xbox Avatars will launch, but they should be coming very soon.

Keep an eye on WindowsCentral.com/Gaming for all the latest in Xbox and Windows 10 gaming, accessories, news, and reviews!

Asher Madan
Asher Madan

Asher Madan handles gaming news for Windows Central. Before joining Windows Central in 2017, Asher worked for a number of different gaming outlets. He has a background in medical science and is passionate about all forms of entertainment, cooking, and antiquing.

15 Comments
  • "delivering Microsoft Avatars across all our platforms, from Xbox through to the Modern Workplace." interesting they are calling it Microsoft Avatars now, not Xbox avatars.
  • Yeah it's looking more and more like the Xbox name is going to be killed off for a all one name under Microsoft. I do think that console will stay with the name Xbox but the services will be Microsoft names. I see Xbox live becoming Microsoft live as well as Xbox game pass. I do hope Microsoft start to use the aviators for games now to and start to give us more younger generation games using them as this is now what the console needs going forward.
  • Maybe they are planning to use the Avatars in other services like Windows Mixed Reality.
  • Once spatial mapping goes online for MR, we can render a avatar on where your friend is standing? Unity (hope it comes to Unreal too) integration is also on the way if I'm not wrong.
  • u do realize xbox is a Microsoft brand right?
  • Looks like you didn't understand his post.
  • This makes sense when you look at what they recently did with Xbox achievements on Minecraft for Switch. Xbox services are "mobile" in the sense that they are platform agnostic. Want to play on the switch? Here's an achievement. Xbox? Everything you already know and love. PC? Web? AR/MR? More? Getting there. Excited to see more soon.
  • Can't wait for the avatar games.
  • Watch out PS4 and Switch!
  • Interesting, it seams like a year later for this hire than it should have been. They need better long term product development planning. Nice to see it happening however!
  • So does this mean the new Avatars are delayed again?
  • Did they had a launch date before?
  • Yeah, fall I think.
  • They said fall of 2017.
  • ofc they would do that. At this stage it's about priority.
    At the end, I will judge their E3 based on the number of diverse exclusives and new IPs they put out. And not timed games they are trying to pass as exclusives. It's really interesting to see if they'll try to make money out of this avatar system with microtransactions or lootbox or things like "daily quest". Invest into making avatar system a service... It'll be really interesting to see the effort they put into games compared to the competition and the effort they put into something like this.
    I've gone through an old topic where people said first party games was bad and that didn't want exclusive because it didn't matter. I guess this is what XB/MS fans want. More than exclusives*. (* ofc until MS announces the next sequel of their main franchise).