While another of his colleagues at Xbox stated they do not want to say they invented game avatars, the Xbox head Mr Mattrick jumped in to say he is claiming to have invented avatars. He's claimed he did 4D boxing in the day and thus invented avatars in the industry, then he went on to refer to The Sims too for a similar concept to the avatar's.

"We're not claiming to have invented avatars," Schappert said at some point, "but at the same time, it's a logical extension of our gamer card, of our gamer tag…"
Suddenly Schappert was interrupted.

"I'm claiming to have invented avatars!" Mattrick shouted.

Oh God, that Mp3 player had better be recording. Did we get that? No matter, he wasn't done, and continued talking as his co-workers chuckled with something between nervousness and outright terror.

"I did 4D Boxing! Do you know what 4D Boxing was?" he asked. "Hey, you should be writing this! That was me. Write that down: 'Don invented avatars for the industry.'"

When it was suggested by my colleague that he might have been stretching the truth, Mattrick protested.

"It's human, it's in 3D, it has a face," he said of his 4D Boxing characters. "It was a starting point. Come on, we were the first guys to do it! Then we did this other thing called the Sims (when Mattrick was with Electronic Arts), you ever hear about that? That had a few kind of 3D characters in it!"

News Source: Canada

Ignorance is bliss.