Xbox Avatar Marketplace (2009)

Avatars made their public debut with the release of the New Xbox Experience in November, 2008. Avatar Marketplace, where users could purchase custom licensed clothing and items from their favorite game franchises and more, launched in November, 2009.

Check out the Kotaku “The Untold Story of Xbox 360 Avatars” article to learn more about the history behind them and how Rare brought them to life.

I came on as Xbox LIVE Portfolio Manager in May 2009, owning the “Personalization” aspect of the marketplace which included: themes, gamer pics, gamer tags and the soon to be launched Avatars. Though I owned the revenue for the Personalization Portfolio, I wore many hats - creating policy, developing workflows, designing marketing and merchandising materials, driving licensing agreements, program management with engineering, and more.

Xbox was committed to launching the marketplace in the fall 2009 console update and bringing to life a micro-transaction business that had not yet begun to be developed. At that time we had two console updates pushed per year, with the biggest happening each fall in November. It was hit or miss.

To say it was a struggle would be an understatement. We had limited budgeting and resources, but there had been a public (E3) announcement that this would happen and that motivated us to get creative in our execution. Convincing AAA studios to let 3rd party developers manipulate their IP for a new, unproven Xbox experience with little to no data or forecasting of impact was risky. We got a lot of “no’s” before we ever got a single yes.

The concept of an Avatar asset within the Xbox ecosystem didn’t exist. We were simultaneously pushing code updates, creating new tools to package and manage assets, and building out the XDK while developing policy, creating certification and operations workflows, and updating publisher licensing agreements. Rare was working overtime to train and foster 3rd party development studios to develop assets. There was a lot of trial and error, well, mainly error that had us building and rebuilding assets by hand, pushing them to Cert and testing rigorously.

While there was interest in developing assets, even our 1st party franchises like Halo, Gears of War, Mass Effect and Forza were hesitant. We needed to create a strong, impactful launch with limited IP, so we got creative. We had a (not terribly large) budget that wasn’t allocated, so we decided to use it and fund our own asset creation. So, we pitched this idea to our GM and LCA (legal corporate affairs). It was a resounding “no”.

This was NOT done at Xbox. “Too much risk,” was the repeated mantra from LCA since the marketplace at that time was global. Every item we published was pushed to all markets. But the allure of pure gross margin profits we felt was our winning hand, so, we came back with an altered pitch - we’ll get every item reviewed by the Geopolitical team and get approval from LCA before it’s created. They agreed.

Xbox knows its user profiles well and we had a lot of data and user research at our disposal to make informed decisions about what to develop, though more often than not we would sit in a room and throw out ideas to see what would stick. We pitched 10 “collections”, got them passed through Geopoly and approved by LCA and started developing the assets with Rare and Lakshya Digital. We worked with Merchandising and Marketing to develop store artwork, we tested usability with focus groups, and when launch rolled around we managed to ship 10 collections that was a mix of 1st and 3rd party games IP and Xbox “originals” collections.

The Xbox Avatar Marketplace launch in 2009 and it destroyed our forecast for the year in one month. It was a resounding success. Suddenly, we had a viable product that 3rd party games franchises were clamoring to develop, and clothing brands, music and entertainment companies wanted to jump into as well.

The next two years pushed the boundaries with policy changes (weapons vs. no weapons), avatar experiences in games and hangouts on Xbox (watching movies with friends), the overhaul to a more modern Avatar to support Kinect experiences (overhauling thousands of assets to fit new model), the redevelopment of the Xbox ingestion backend, and more.

The Avatar Marketplace was challenging, innovative, creative, and a wild ride, and one my most favorite product experiences to date.