So, the new 360 dashboard came out last week, and other than reminding me somehow of iTunes, I couldn’t really care less. The colours are still obnoxious (actually, even more so), and it still boots up to a page displaying advertising, and how much time do you really spend in the dashboard anyways? Consoles are for gaming. Instead of just calling it Dashboard 2.0, they’re now calling it the New Xbox Experience. So I guess I wasn’t really experiencing it before. Glad they sorted that out for me.

The only notable change was the option to create a profile avatar, presumably in your own likeness. You can take snapshots of these avatars to use for your gamer picture, if you choose. We did not choose.

Chris’s “avatar” (I hate that word, I don’t know why they couldn’t have come up with some clever Microsoft-branded name), came first, because we always play under his profile by default. We do this to consolidate our gamerscore, and keep all of our achievements in the same place. I knew that this gimick had only been thrown in due to the popularity of Nintendo’s Miis, but I was frankly surprised at how much of a rip-off the whole thing was. Not only that, it wasn’t even a good rip-off. The interface is identical, with 3X3 grids of options in floating bubbles, and I’m pretty sure they used some of the exact eyes and mouths that Nintendo used, but they took the actual Miis and made them stupider. They did add ears, which was a plus, but then for some unfathomable reason, they didn’t add the option to move and resize the features that they have on the Wii. So even if you find eyes that look like yours, the head shape you chose might make them too far apart. I’ve been consistently amazed in the past with how strikingly similar some Miis are to the people they represent. Microsoft, while trying for a less cartoony, realistic feel, eliminated that entirely. You end up with a sort of generic you, that could represent half of the people that you know.

One thing I was pleased with initially (don’t worry, they managed to screw this up too) was the addition of avatar clothing. If they made the clothing store in Rock Band its own game, I would play it. For hours. So since I’m such a big fan of avatar clothing, I was sorely disappointed with the choices the 360 was offering. If you’re going to be simple like Miis, then do that, but if you’re going to be more adult and complicated, then you actually have to do it. Either virtual clothing is too expensive to produce, or takes up too much hard drive space, or we’ll be seeing “clothing packs” for sale on XBL sometime in the future. Wanna make a wager?

So Chris’s character ended up in a tshirt and blue jeans. Pretty standard, and then Chris’s boring avatar was finished. Next was mine, and after selecting a face that could belong to three quarters of the population, it was time for my favourite part of avatar-ing. Clothes.

The female clothing selection is outdated and insulting. If you make a female avatar, there is no option to wear jeans. Jeans!! Almost without exception the tops are all blouses. Did they assume I would only be making avatars for my mom? When creating my character, I honestly felt, as a demographic, completely over-looked and offended, as if they couldn’t comprehend a girl wearing jeans and sneakers playing an xbox. What a joke. I couldn’t even wear my Cons, like Chris’s avatar could. So they created multiple styles of running shoes, and then removed them from the female selection menu, and replaced them with ballet flats and sandals. Are you kidding me?

On the Wii, the difference between male and female Miis is that girls have sort of a skirt on. This, like signs on bathroom doors, is an overly generic symbol that you’d have to be trying to take offense to.

On the 360, however, selecting female gives your avatar boobs. So if your 7 year old niece wants an avatar, she gets boobs. Good thinking guys. While Miis are so cartoonized that they could represent children, or adults, or men, or women, the xbox avatars eliminate that in favour of breasts. Stupid men.

Since obviously no one was concerned with blatant idea-stealing in regards to Miis, I wish that they had just copied it exactly. And if they wanted to raise the bar, it should have been Fight Night Round 3 style facial creation with the clothing store of Rock Band. The in-between lazy useless garbage they opted for instead is a waste of time. Thanks for nothing, Microsoft. Stupid jerk stores.

End Rant.