No Spring Update For Xbox Live

General Manager at Xbox Live, Marc Whitten, has announced that the company will forgo the company’s bi-annual update for Xbox Live to focus on game portability.

There’s usually an Xbox Live update every Spring and Autumn, however, in an interview with Next Generation, Whitten said that while the update was being ditched the company would release a DRM tool released next month to fix the issue of XBLA gamers needing to be connected to XBL if their console had broken down and been replaced.

“We have taken a different approach this spring and spent a lot of our time and resources of building the proper infrastructure and scale for the service not just today but also into the future. So while most users will not notice any significant changes to the dashboard this spring, I can tell you that the team will be releasing a new digital rights management (DRM) tool next month that will allow you to better consolidate your licenses for downloaded content to a single Xbox and allow you the freedom to be able to play your content both online and offline.”

Interestingly, Next Generation also reports that Whitten says underperforming XBL games will be “delisted”. Games that are more than 6 months old and have a Metacritic score below 65 and a conversion rate below 6% on the service will be delisted after a three month notification period. The move is part of the company’s new quality over quantity approach to business.

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Source: Next Generation