Set your wayback machines to E3 2005. Microsoft has just introduced the new Xbox 360 to the world. Our good friend J Allard (long since lost to the world of Zune) was at that time the poster boy for the next generation of Microsoft gaming much as Peter Moore is now. As such, it fell on J Allard's trendsetting little shoulders to lead us all boldly into the future.

For the most part, Microsoft has done a surprisingly well-rounded job of delivering on their promises - that is, to everyone except VelocityGirl.

But who is VelocityGirl you might ask? VelocityGirl is the casual gamer - the one that picks up a controller when at a friends house, plays Bejeweled online, whatever. She's the market that the console makers so desperately want to pick up. More than a year later it's easy to say that Nintendo has clearly won the hearts and minds of those gamers, but in early 2005 when the Wii was barely on the radar, things weren't so cut and dry.

So what was Microsoft's plan to get Suzie Solitaire to invest in a $400 space heater/white noise generator? The user-driven marketplace. Here it is, straight from the horse's mouth;

...the Marketplace is going to be a way to get VelocityGirl reengaged with our market and reengaged with games. Because on the Marketplace, she's going to be an active member of the community, the community of people that play games like Tony Hawk.

Now, she might never pick up a controller, never take a run in the halfpipe but she'll be able to design and sell stickers, shirts, boards, sound tracks and even design her own skate park for those hardcore gamers like Striker.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying this plan would have worked. As a matter of fact, I'm sure that VelocityGirl would be less interested in making her stickers than I'd be in buying them -- but that doesn't mean there isn't the seed of a brilliant idea in there. Maybe a million gamers flooding the servers with crap content wouldn't fly - but what about being able to send your custom creations to your friends? After all, Nintendo's letting me send my Mii's back and forth - why can't Microsoft let me do the same for my custom skateparks?

And along with VelocityGirl's sticker sales, we have the first steps towards a burgeoning user-driven economy. At first, there may not be much worth buying and selling - but even if it's only amongst my friend's list, having the ability to sell user-created goods for Microsoft Points can only do Microsoft a world of good. After all, once we get those points, we have to spend them right there - in the Marketplace!

As it stands, we can't even post our own Gamer Pictures to Xbox Live. So much for user-driven customization. What really aggravates me is that the channels for this to happen already exist - companies like EA have been using them to charge you for cheats and "training videos" for months now.

It looks like the dream of grassroots user-created content has died, and VelocityGirl along with it. The closest we have now is the XNA Program - and unless casual gamer VelocityGirl happens to have a degree in programming and/or graphic design, she's going to have to stay in the grave that Microsoft's neglect has dug for her.

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