The news we've all been waiting for. According to German site Xbox Archiv, the update that will feature background downloading will be released at the end of this month.

The reports say that confirmation came from Boris Schneider-Johne (Senior Product Manager at Microsoft Germany) that the update includes six queue downloads in the background. Schneider-Johne also mentions that there will be a lot more features included; although he refused to talk further about the additional features and said that he'd let Xbox users be surprised. He let it spill, however, that players will be able to download while they play.

If you're on 56k though, it's unlikely you want to play online games while downloading; but the ability to boot up Oblivion while downloading a load of trailers seems very nice.

Here are the things the Senior Product Manager has to say about the dashboard update:

"The user marks a file to download and it will be put in an active queue download list. There are 6 slots reserved in that queue. They will be downloaded sequentially not in parallel! If the Xbox 360 sees there is bandwidth available, it will boost the download speed up. During Online Sessions the downloads will be paused to guarantee no lags. It’s also possible to turn off the console while in the middle of a download; after turning the console back on the downloads will resume. When a download finishes the user will get a message that it has been downloaded.