New Xbox Avatars should launch in October

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The new Xbox Avatars will be here soon.

Recently, a lot of new features hit Alpha – Skip Ahead and Alpha Ring Xbox Insiders. Aside from the new "Shopping Cart" functionality, select Xbox Insiders got the chance to test out the new Xbox Avatars. It's been weeks since that announcement, and many Xbox One owners were wondering when they would get the chance to experience it for themselves.

Today, on the Inside Xbox show, Microsoft announced that the new Xbox Avatars would be available to all Xbox One owners in October. Luckily October is only a few days away, but it's unclear when the update will hit the system. We'll keep you posted as soon as we know more.

The old Xbox Avatars have been around for years and they don't cater to everyone. A revamp was long overdue and it's surprising that it didn't happen sooner. One of the major exclusions numerous gamers continuously asked Microsoft to implement was the ability to add wheelchairs and prosthetics to their characters.

If you use a wheelchair or any other prosthetic, these new Xbox Avatars include ways you can tailor them to fit your needs. It's unclear why they weren't included in the first place as it's a rather significant oversight. New Xbox Avatars have been in development for years now and many gamers were beginning to lose hope that they would launch anytime soon.

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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.
19 Comments
  • I wish Microsoft would tell us what we can do with these new avatars besides just have them.
  • We can't really do anything. It's just a way to express yourself and put it on your profile. Maybe there will be new ways to interact with them in the future.
  • Will it be available for PC too?
  • From what I remember when they first announced it, it's currently just for your profile and the dashboard to make it more personal for you. But they built the framework so that game devs can take advantage of them and use them in games as well. I hope they partnered with some for launch, they would be epic.
  • Unity integration so indies can use'em.
    The goal? MS's trying to roll XBL to every platform.
  • Some video games use your avatar as its main character/protagonist.
  • they had that opportunity with the 360, never really used it.
    off the top of my head, Disneyland Adventures, Kinect Sports, Kinect Adventures!, they all use avatars, but you had to create your own upon first booting up the game, they didn't use your existing avatar
  • Bomberman Battlefest for 360 (Back Compat) uses your Xbox Live avatar. I play that game as Deathstroke (from Arkham Origins) all the time, lol
  • "Ready Player One" : )
  • You can spend real money on virtual clothing for them
  • I hope to see them as emojis, to get after Apple's consumer space at least a bit and at least in the gaming industry.
  • They need to work on adding different head shapes. Currently, no matter what you make your avatar look like, it will have a flat head in the back. More variety please.
  • I hope they get majorly updated before release. Its a bit of a mess in its current state.
  • kind of pointless really unless there's some games to.utimise them in. Something akin to splatoon would be good or Mario kart maybe? Perhaps Ooblets and some ID games will step up and take them onboard
  • I think it would be cool to have a Mario kartish mode as one of the horizon 4 expansions.
  • They should add way more stuff to the editor. And we want Avatar games
  • Hope they make another doritos crash course, those games were Pretty fun.
  • They need to make the Male faces less feminine. They are too hipster/millenial/whatever as they are.
  • While I do give them credit for putting in an option for a wheelchair, to be honest I use video games and the Xbox to escape reality. As a MS patient, I would rather have my avatar standing. :)