Way back when - before the launch of the Xbox 360 - Microsoft made a big deal of the fact that gamers will be able to pimp out their new consoles with a new (for consoles) type of hardware accessory: faceplates. Even now there is a feature page on Xbox.com about personalizing your console with the trifecta of purchasable items: gamer pictures, themes, and faceplates. The first two slowly grew into a massive source of income for publishers, and brought a ton of crappy content into the Marketplace. Yay for microtransactions that let you buy a set of four ugly images.
Faceplates initially seemed off to a promising start as well. A number of games offered them as pre-order bonuses. Microsoft launched a number of simple first-party faceplates, and later even a trio of premium ones that included downloadable dashboard themes. Artists like Pavel Dolgov adopted the curvy slivers of plastic as a canvas for their paintings. However, over time, while gamer pictures and themes exploded all over the Marketplace and people's gamercards, faceplates started fading into obscurity.
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