Microsoft Adds Cheesy Postcard Functionality for XBox Live Avatars

Microsoft’s new Free Your Avatar site lets you pop your custom Xbox Live avatar into a picture.

Ever since Xbox Live’s new format went online, people have been clamoring for the chance to put their custom avatars into little postcard pictures with firework backgrounds. Well, now that dream has become a reality.

The Free Your Avatar tool allows you to enter an Xbox Live username, and then allows you to drag an image of the account’s avatar into a picture frame, where you can position it and add different backgrounds and text.

One interesting aspect of this web-tool is that you can enter any gamer tag you know and make a photo out of it. This means you can finally make that family Christmas photo of all your friends’ avatars that you always wanted. Or you can always just deface the avatar of someone you don’t like.

Once you’re done with your masterpiece you can either download it, email it to your friends, or export it to various social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo, or MySpace.

Even if you don’t have an Xbox Live account, the site gives a catalogue of a few preset avatars for you to play around with, so that non-gamers aren’t left out of the exciting avatar-framing action.

All sarcasm aside, this little tool is actually kind of neat. It would be nice to see some more entertaining options than just backgrounds and text, like props or different poses, but for a quick distraction it’s pretty fun.

Check it out here.