Xbox fix will let you resurrect your ancient Gamerpic

If you’re nostalgic for your ancient Xbox 360 Gamerpic — old enough to drive in some states — Xbox engineers have cooked up a way for you to restore it to your profile on a modern machine.

Microsoft engineering lead Eden Marie revealed last night on Twitter that Xbox Series X players in the Alpha Skip Ahead Insider group now have the option of choosing the last Gamerpic they used on their account during the Xbox 360 days. It shows up at the top of the list of the dozens of stock gamerpics currently available.

Marie said this only shows up for players who have ever had an Xbox 360 Gamerpic, and if their current (i.e. Xbox One or Xbox Series X) Gamerpic isn’t already the one they were using from the Xbox 360.

Why might this be useful? In the Xbox One era, Avatars and Gamerpics changed a couple of times, and there was never an option for importing your Xbox 360 Gamerpic directly. Lots of people took snapshots of their OG avatars laughing, juggling, or doing silly stuff, for example, and became quite attached to it.

Furthermore, the classic 12 Gamerpics that were included with the Xbox 360 from its 2005 launch were effectively unavailable unless you went to the trouble of finding a .png of the Pensive Panda, Scowling Monkey, or Jaded Beanie-Wearing Bubblegum Kid somewhere else, and used the custom upload feature to keep it on your profile.

If you want to change your current pic to one of those, you’ll need an Xbox 360 handy, and change your pic there as you would normally. I just logged back in and, yep, they’re still there.

Eurogamer explained that this change was implemented after the end of August, when Marie solved the problem behind one player’s continually shrinking Gamerpic, which they had bought for 80 Microsoft Points ($1 in 2005, $1.40 adjusted for inflation, $2.38 MSRP today). Resolutions increased with each console generation but the picture size didn’t go along with it. You might remember this if you tried carrying over your Gamerpic from the Xbox 360 to the Xbox One when that launched in 2013.

The newest changes mean simply that original picture can be brought forward at full size. It might seem like a small thing, but I’m psyched to bring back my original pic: an Avatar snapshot of Boba Fett, wearing an Alabama Crimson Tide shirt, jorts, and mandals, twirling a Red Dead Redemption lasso.