Microsoft made their rumored 3D Avatars official at the E3 2008 briefing on Monday. Now we know how we "look" in the virtual worlds of all three major consoles.

Nintendo made the start with the Mii avatars and Sony already teased us with Playstation Home last year. In the image above you see all three avatar design next to each other.

The Nintendo Mii on the left is the most simplistic design leveraging the "smiley face appeal". Nintendo has a history of cute characters that are targeted at young gamers, but also found tons of fans in older age groups. So Nintendo users are used to the appeal of the Miis and they fit to the Nintendo world.

The new Xbox 3D avatars are a bit more sophisticated compared to Nintendo's Mii, but they still look rather cartoonish and cute. They work for the casual gamers of the Xbox 360, but I see an issue for large group of hard-core shooter gamers to represent themselves in the virtual world with this style of avatar design.

The Sony Playstation Home avatars aim to be as realistic as possible. This design will work for grown-ups and hard core gamers who do not want to make a fool of themselves running around as childish cartoon characters.

Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo sure thought a lot about how their avatars should look like. The results are reflecting what they think most of their user base would find attractive. The avatar designs are an reflection of you.

I can imagine that the style of avatar could become a purchase descision between consoles, besides the available games and media offerings.