Fan Rebuilds Classic Xbox 360 Avatar Editor for Web Browsers with Over 21,000 Items

An Xbox fan has taken it upon themselves to rebuild the classic Xbox 360 Avatar Editor for web browsers, creating a new website known as 360sona. Shared with the Xbox Reddit community by its creator, u/Sad-Wave5289, the project was developed over the course of most of the year and features a complete catalogue of items across every collection ever released by Microsoft.

According to the creator, the browser-based editor includes 21,425 items encompassing Halo, Gears, sports leagues like the NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB, the University collection, as well as brands like adidas and Puma alongside smaller third-party collections. Additionally, the project features 2,644 props, with every single one capable of playing its respective animation.

The most challenging aspect of the project involved the rendering pipeline. Because the Xbox 360 originally drew avatars using its own undocumented shaders, skeleton, clip format, and camera presets, the developer had to reverse engineer the entire pipeline and rebuild it in WebGL 2. The creator tested the accuracy by comparing renders of items against the console's actual output, ensuring that the meshes, textures, and console lighting match the original hardware while running on real animation data.

Users can jump straight into the editor to play around with customization options, or sign in to save their creations by providing just a name and password without needing an email address. The website explicitly notes that Microsoft created all items, textures, animations, and artwork, and that using the site does not grant any official license to the material. Projects celebrating Xbox history, such as the Insignia Xbox Live recreation, have historically been met with leniency from Microsoft, and 360sona serves as a nostalgic blast from the past for longtime fans of the platform.