No More Xbox Live Silver, It Is Now Free

Video game publisher and hardware maker Microsoft has announced that it is renaming the Xbox Live Silver service into Xbox Live Free, while keeping the same set of features that includes demo downloads, add on buying and customizable Avatars.

Graeme Boyd, who is the community manager for the European Xbox division, was the first to let the world in on the change, tweeting that, “Just been told that 'Xbox LIVE Silver Membership' will now officially be called 'Xbox LIVE Free Membership'. The times they are a-changin...”

The new Free name is being used on the newly redesigned Xbox official website but it seems that the change will not actually make it to the Xbox 360 until the new dashboard update that will be delivered later in the fall.

It's not exactly clear why Microsoft chose to make the change from Silver to Free, especially considering the fact that no name change appears to be planned for Xbox Live Gold, the paid tier for the service.

Xbox Live Gold is needed by all those who are interested in playing multiplayer games, watching movies that are streamed via Netflix and use integration with Facebook and with Last.fm.

Microsoft has recently announced that the price per year for a Gold membership will be increased from 50 to 60 dollars.

The change will take hold on November 1 and on the same date Microsoft will introduce something called the Gold Family Plan, which will allow as many as four players to use different identities to access the Xbox Live features paying 99 dollars.

Microsoft seems to be into name changes lately, with the XNA Creators Club becoming the App Hub, in order to integrate Windows 7 Phone projects and probably compete with the App Store from Apple.

The fall dashboard update for the Xbox 360 will be accompanied by the introduction of the Kinect motion tracking system on November 4 in the United States.