Xbox Live Gold Members Get Gears Ad, Other XBL Items First

The latest ad for Epic's Xbox 360 shooter Gears of War available for download on Xbox Live has also heralded in an apparent policy shift on Live account levels, according to comments by Microsoft employees. As brought to light in a follow-up comment on Microsoft staffer Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb's weblog on the ad, members currently accessing Live at the 'silver' level currently will not be able to access the trailer, while 'gold' level members are free to download the item. "So here is the deal," commented Hyrb, "Silver members WILL get access to this, probably in about a week." He continued, "This is going to happen more and more (Gold getting things before Silver) so you may want to think about upgrading if you want all the latest and greatest trailers, demos etc." In its previous configuration, 'silver' Xbox Live members had concurrent access to all of the same free and purchasable content as users of its subscription based 'gold' level, but were prohibited from using Live for multiplayer gaming. As was made apparent in Hyrb's comment, the Gears download seems poised to bring in a new shift in Live, whereby 'gold' members enjoy more premium-level access to content before their counterparts. However, no further official statement on the policy or specific items to receive Gold access first has yet been made by Microsoft.