Dashboard Update for Xbox 360 Live

First we were told the update to the 360 dashboard wasn't supposed to happen until March. It was released last night. This change in release schedule is quite a turnaround. Is this the full 'mega patch' that was promised for March, or a cut-down version designed to address something urgent?

As we've seen in the past with Windows patches, Microsoft doesn't like to interfere with it's planned patch schedules, but will sometimes bow to pressure when there is a security vulnerability.

If the real reason for bringing this forward is a security vulnerability, it wouldn't be the first time that Microsoft have patched a Live dashboard to try and keep hackers out of their console. There have already been reports, rumours, rumblings and outright scams associated with cracks for the 360, so it's not a giant leap to imagine that there are already known weaknesses that Microsoft wants to plug.

Alternatively, the main reason for the patch might be to give users the ability to avoid destroying their saved games when deleting / restoring a profile. The existing inability to do this was probably upsetting a lot of people, and generating many customer support calls that Microsoft would rather avoid.

Other improvements in the patch include better disk error messages, an improved Xbox Guide, improved accuracy of 'last time played', and improved network configuration for the Netherlands. If anyone knows the exact specifics of the last point, please post something about it.

It was also assumed that there would be no xbox legacy support updates until March. It's still not clear whether this promise will stand. Given the rather weak state of legacy support, it would be nice if there were some updates soon, but obviously proper testing is necessary.

It's likely that quality assurance and testing are the main things that are holding up Microsoft's Xbox 360 patch schedule, and that they are releasing the features that they are sure will work as fast as they can.