If you plan to log on into any part of the Xbox Live service on April 1, starting with 9 AM GMT, you'd better postpone that plan for some time. Specifically, you'd better postpone it for about three hours, because that's the period for which Microsoft has announced that the Xbox Live services will be down.

Xbox Live is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft Corporation for its gaming consoles. It was first made available to the Xbox video game console and an updated version of the service became available for the Xbox 360 console at that system's launch.

Games for Windows Live makes certain aspects of the system available on Windows Vista PCs, albeit with some clear limitations, and there are plans to extend the Live initiative to other platforms such as handhelds and mobile phones as part of the Live Anywhere concept from Microsoft.

Apparently, the downtime, which means you won't be able to purchase anything from the Xbox Live Marketplace and that no online play will take place, is necessary for Microsoft to upgrade the service. We're not very sure as to what an upgrade is in Microsoft's perspective as no list of features to be introduced or tweaked was released to the public. It seems that Microsoft is trying to keep things under wraps until the planned downtime finishes and anyone can freely see if something is changed with the Xbox Live service.

There's a pretty good chance that nothing will change. Forum comments say that Microsoft isn't really launching an update for the service. Based on last year's scheduled downtime listing it seems that it's only a move designed to allow Microsoft to retool the servers on which Xbox Live runs.

A shakeup of those servers is required as later in spring Microsoft has planned an "upgrade" downtime, during which a set of features are to be added to Xbox Live and some elements of the already existing services will be tweaked.