XBOX Live will be down for 24 hours on the 21st

[Roost]

From what i've seen, it is Live 3 but not all the features will be included straight away.

[The Raeven]

True, it will indeed be mostly a server update.
But I did read on the official XBox forums that a dashboard update will be available.

But most new (LIVE server) features can /will be used by future games.
The planned MSN Messenger integration is postponed though...

...anyhoos: An update will come

[Matt KB]

So framework update:

Does that mean it'll run smoother ie less lag in games that experience lag etc?

[Commander Marklar]

Doubt it, unless they provide more bandwidth? Don't see how that'd affect the games though, they all run pretty much peer-to-peer. Individual games would need seperate patches.

Afaik, it is just laying the basis for extra features, bug fixes and stuff like that...

[Valken]

They don't all run peer to peer Marklar, the only one I can think of is Steel Batallion: LoC

With the others the creator of the game acts as host and as such their machine is the "server"

The actual Xbox Live servers are for finding games, stats and such

[Matt KB]

From Xbox Forums, by Major Nelson.

As you all know from the previous announcement (view post 7032451) Today (4/21) we are upgrading Xbox Live to lay the foundation for new features. While you won't see many of these new features until games support them, I wanted to tell you about a new feature that you'll be able to experience immediately when the service is back online later today. The first thing to I need to tell you is there is NOT a major dashboard upgrade, but there is one feature that you'll see that I have not announced until today: Voice Messaging! After today's upgrade Xbox Live members will be able to send and receive friend requests and invites from the dashboard with a short voice message attachments. As games begin to adopt voice messaging, you'll be able to send/receive voice messages in game, but for now the only way to use voice messaging is in the dashboard. After the upgrade, give it a try!

Once the upgrade is completed (no, I don't know what time it will be back) we'll have the systems in place for future games to include some of the new features that we now support.

[The Raeven]

This is what I found...

Microsoft announced today the latest updates to the Xbox Live service. For those who haven't heard, the Live system has been and will continue to be down for the rest of the day for the upgrades.

Once it's back online, Xbox Live users will get to send electronic voicemail friend requests and voicemail game invites to one another.
As new games are developed, they can (at the developer's discretion) take advantage of new features:

• Teams: Gamers can create teams, or "clans" to share strategies, set up games and share other info.
• Competitions: The XSN concept moves to the console itself, as gamers won't need to use the XSN web site to set up tourneys for the games they love to play. Xbox Live will track the stats and keep gamers updated via their consoles on their current standings.
• Content sharing: Develop and share logos, maps and other content and share them through online storage.
• Level Playing Field technology: Anti-cheating measures can be employed by game developers to limit the effects of people dropping from a losing game or other weak ways of messing with the stats systems.

[Commander Marklar]

They don't all run peer to peer Marklar, the only one I can think of is Steel Batallion: LoC

With the others the creator of the game acts as host and as such their machine is the "server"

The actual Xbox Live servers are for finding games, stats and such

Yea, that's what I meant though -- the servers aren't provided by Microsoft so no amount of bandwidth fixing is gonna stop somebody crap hosting a game. I just used the wrong term.