Well, Kotaku has released a list they supposedly gotten from an anonymous inside source at Microsoft listing a whole truckload of changes and additions to Xbox Live come the Spring update. The ones I find most interesting?

Xbox LIVE
5. Introduce a group chat (4) for Private Chat and conferences through Video Chat.

Finally! This is something I thought was weird they didn’t include from the start. Afterall, there are slots for 4 simultaneous private chats, but that’s just so you can talk to one person and have the other three on hold. What’s up with that, has anyone ever had a need to use that? Who’s that popular that 3 people will wait patiently for their turn to chat with you over xbox live? Seriously.

Games
11. Support for titles to store installation data on Storage Device for faster loading.

You mean…. like the playstation 3 does? I do find it annoying that some games require an “installation” on the PS3. I mean, when you buy a game, the first thing you want to do after putting it in your console is start playing it, right? Now, I realize the installation time is to keep the in-game load times down, which I suppose benefits the game experience in the long run. But still… it’s always interesting to see who Microsoft is taking the hints from… which leads me to:

Dashboard/Miscellaneous
6. Calibration options for motion sensor devices.

This time they’re taking the hint from Nintendo…. just like how Sony added motion / tilt sensing as an afterthought because of the Big N. If this is true, than the Microsoft Wand is probably true too. Meaning a Microsoft sports mini-game disc will probably be packaged with it? Haha, I jest, but seriously… it could happen.

Peep the whole list @ Kotaku