“Sometime
over the next few hours when you sign in to Xbox Live you’ll receive a
prompt to accept this mandatory update,” writes Xbox blogger Major Nelson.
“This update contains code to ‘prepare for future growth of the
service.’ There are no other changes or enhancements in this update…in
other words no new features. The next obvious question you’ll have is
about the spring update. At this point we have nothing to announce, and
the moment there is information to share I will do so.”
We
don’t know what Microsoft has up its sleeve yet for its spring update
but it may need to be something good. While Xbox Live has always been
way ahead of the competition, you get the feeling Sony and Nintendo are
going to be closing the gap during 2008. Sony’s readying its own movie
and TV (and probably music) download service for launch on the
PlayStation Network during 2008, according to marketing bigwig Peter Dille,
and promising to finally enable in-game access to XMB features, while
Nintendo’s WiiWare original games download service will certainly be
interesting. Ok, Xbox 360 already has pretty much all of the online
features that PS3 and Wii will offer in due course, but that’s no
reason to sit back and take it easy. PlayStation Home could also prove
a trump card for Sony, and the firm’s European division is rumored to be announcing a Home launch date at a press invite-only event early next month.
Major
Nelson has also revealed that Xbox Live will be offline for routine
maintenance on Monday April 21 from 0200-1000 Pacific time (if you’re
in a different time zone you can check local times here).
“As
a result, the ‘My Xbox’ section of Xbox.com will be unavailable, and
the Xbox forums will be in read only mode (you won’t be able to post.)
The remainder of Xbox.com will be available. This is for maintenance,
there are no new features that will appear on your Xbox 360 console or
Xbox.com when the service comes back online. This is server maintenance
only.”
Incase you didn’t get that, there will be no new features added.
