Mii = Avatar?

Miyamoto at E3 2008 by IGN:

"I don't really use the term avatar to refer to what we've done with the Miis. We created the Miis with the idea that the people you live with in your house or family, you also live together with inside the TV, and you can use those characters interchangeably in the games you play. To see that a company like Microsoft has taken something we've done and kind of looked at it in a way and brought it out on their platform to kind of show that we've done has become the standard, I find quite flattering. But on the other hand, I think probably the basic ideas behind perhaps those two different systems are different and because of that I think they will probably develop in different ways. "