In what seems to be becoming classic Microsoft system update slapstick style, after a slight technical hitch, which saw the entire Xbox Live Marketplace being rendered temporarily unavailable, the latest Xbox Live dashboard update has been deployed, and should be reaching everyone with a connection to Xbox Live, whether through a Gold or Silver account, the next time you turn your console on and connect to the internet.
There'll be little different once your console's updated.
Sign in, and you'll be notified that there's an update available, and asked whether you want to accept it or not. You do, because if you don't, you won't be able to connect to Xbox Live, and the console will repeatedly prompt you until you eventually get round to doing it. Accept the update, and it'll remarkably quickly download the file, and then go about the process of updating the console. Somewhat illogically, as part of the updating process, the console will reset itself two or three times, although the updating message doesn't have the foresight to warn you about this - so don't worry if your 360 randomly switches itself off. It hasn't broken - it's just part of the update.
If you're wandering what swanky new benefits you'll see when you turn your console back on, the answer is, well, not much. Most of the updates the dashboard adds are for the internal workings of the 360, not the interface, so the only real changes you'll be able to see are that you can now pay for Microsoft Points, Xbox Live Subscriptions, and Games on Demand titles using your PayPal account, and there'll be a new option under "Auto-Off" in the Console Settings menu, that'll place your console on standby if it's idle for more than an hour.
Other than that, the update also brings with it support for a "new disk format", which basically means the standard Xbox 360 DVDs will now use different copy protection, freeing up an extra gigabyte of space on the disks for developers to use. Of course, this does have a rather large drawback, as some consoles end up unable to read game disks - but if your console's one of the few affected ones, Microsoft have offered to replace it with a brand new 250GB 360 Slim, with a year of Xbox Live Gold Membership to boot.So there you have it. Now, when the little update message pops up, you'll know exactly what to expect. Just sit back, and let your console do all the hard work.
