People use “Mii Creator” and “Mii Maker” to mean at least four different things, which is why searching for one and landing on the other is so common. The names are not the useful distinction — where the character has to end up is.
The three kinds of tool
Console editors
The character editor built into a console. It is the only kind that can put a character into that system's games, because it is the only one with access to the save data. It is also the least convenient to use, and you cannot get a high-resolution image out of it.
Browser creators
Independent web tools like this one. They run anywhere, need no account and export real image files, but they cannot write to a console. Their parts are their own artwork, so a character made in one is not literally the same object as one made in another — even when the result looks similar.
Renderers and converters
Tools that take existing character data and draw it or convert it between formats. These are developer-facing, they depend on knowing a specific binary format, and some of them rely on assets extracted from games — which is worth knowing before you build anything on top of one.
Which one you actually want
- A profile picture or an avatar: a browser creator. Export a PNG and you are done.
- A character inside a game: the console editor. Design here first if you like, then rebuild it there from the recipe.
- A design you can hand to somebody else: a browser creator with codes and recipes, so the design travels rather than just the picture.
- Reading existing character data: a renderer or converter, with the licensing caveats above.
Why they cannot be one tool
The gap is not laziness, it is access. A web page is sandboxed away from console storage, and it should be. The bridge between the two is a person following a list of settings — which is unglamorous but reliable, and works in every direction and on every system.
That is the reasoning behind this site's recipe feature: rather than pretend the gap does not exist, make crossing it a two-minute job. Open any character in the instructions generator to see the form that actually travels.