Does someone at Microsoft HQ really, really hate me? There I was, all planning to celebrate my 40th birthday next Tuesday (please, no presents) with some fast and furious "Halo 3" deathmatches, and now I hear that Xbox Live—the online gaming and media service for the Xbox 360—will be down for the count that day (and potentially all day) for, like, "maintenance." What gives?

OK, I'm kidding—although not about the fact that it's my birthday next week (it is), or that I'll be 40 (I will be), or that someone at Microsoft may hate me (hey, you never know). However, I am only joshing by suggesting that Xbox Live maintenance, even of the "all day" variety, is necessarily a bad thing.

Indeed, Microsoft appears to have learned its lesson after the infamous Xbox Live meltdown of Christmas 2007. Since then, Live (which boasts upwards of 17 million members) has barely skipped a beat, even after the big "New Xbox Experience" overhaul last November. (The same can't be said about Xbox 360 hardware, unfortunately.)

On his blog, Xbox Live's Major Nelson (a.k.a. Larry Hryb, director of programming for Live) writes that the scheduled downtime—slated to begin at 12:01 a.m. PST on the 16th and lasting for "up to 24 hours"—is for "maintenance only," intended primarily to "prepare for some of the recently announced features" on tap for the fall.

Those features, announced during E3 last week in Los Angeles, include goodies such as Facebook and Twitter access, an enhanced Netflix player that will let you browse for new movies, and streaming 1080p videos over Live's upcoming, Zune Marketplace-powered video store.

If the price for all those new features is a day of Live maintenance, well … I guess I'll live. (And besides, at least the maintenance is scheduled for a workday and not over the weekend.)

In any case, consider yourself warned: No Xbox Live next Tuesday. Hey, single-player mode isn't so bad, right?

Related:
Xbox Live Service Maintenance [Xbox Live's Major Nelson]

source : http://tech.yahoo.com