Inside Social Games

A while back we covered the release of the “New Xbox Experience,” as Microsoft accelerated its move in a more social direction. However, new whispers have surfaced about possible additional new social features coming  in the form of user generated avatars.

Rare, the Xbox Live Avatar developers, stated earlier this month that new tools may be coming with a future update to the system.

According to Avatar designer, Dale Murchie, “There may be features coming that open up the expressive potential of the Xbox community, but we’re keeping quiet on that for now.”

For those that may not know, the original Avatars feature that was launched with the New Xbox Experience did not have customization capabilities. According to Murchie at the time, “User-generated content is a huge area that would not have been done justice if we had tried to cram it into the launch release of this project.” It was actually art head Lee Musgrave that gave the most blatant statement saying, “Creativity is going to play a big part in the development of the Avatars.”

Considering the overall benefit to Live, Microsoft would be remiss to not expand Avatars in this way as doing so opens up new doors for more microtransactions and virtual goods accessories.

Of course, there is always the concern for “bad” or “offensive” user generated content. However, Microsoft has already learned a lot about how to keep this from happening – the company already allows the submission of games but not directly to the public. These games are actually submitted through what is called the “Creator’s Club,” in which membership is a requirement for submission. Within this group, submissions are played and evaluated by peers, and thus only the higher quality creations make it to the public.

Though nothing is 100% confirmed or denied, this could certainly be an excellent addition to Xbox Live, and should a quality assurance method similar to the current game submission tools be implemented, then this (possible) new feature will be all the better.

[via Virtual Goods News]