Xbox Live Silver Accounts Now Wait a Week For Demos

1up notes a change in the way that Xbox Live Silver-level (free) memberships work. Now folks that don't pay will have to wait an additional week to get game demos. Microsoft's Xbox representative Major Nelson assures us it's not meant to 'annoy' users of the service, but to provide additional value to Gold subscribers. "When people talk about features they'd like to see added to an Xbox Live Gold subscription, dedicated servers, expanded buddy lists or separate bandwidth pipes for popular downloads are first to mind. Instead of adding features to the Gold experience, however, they're "enhancing" Gold subscriptions by continuing a practice started last summer of stripping Silver members of features and making them Gold-only."

Not new

[MeanMF]

They've had this policy in place for over a year. The change is that now silver accounts can see the content in the list even though they can't download it yet. If they try to download it, they get a message explaining the situation. Before the update, the content just wouldn't show up in their list at all.