In an interview podcast with Xbox 360 Fanboy, Major Nelson dropped a few hints of what Microsoft's regular Spring cleaning (well, Spring Update) will bring. He says that there'll be (at least) one new dash feature, one "simple thing" he's been asking the engineers for "since launch." That's it: that's the hint.

So that left 360 Fanboy in a Nancy Drew mood. Doing a little digging and back-checking, their guess is that the new feature being hinted at, the one the Major wants so badly since launch, is for the Xbox 360 to tell you what disc in its tray. That "Play Game" label will change to "Play: (Insert game here)" or something like that, or so the theory goes. Of course, it's just a theory (360 Fanboy puts odds at 84.7% of it happening).

Sorry if it's just a hint, but that's coming out of Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb's mouth in his latest podcast, reports CVG. No concrete details about the Spring Update were released with the podcast - all the Major will say is "more functionality and integration" and "stay tuned."

On the other hand, this podcast's subject was about, among other things, PlayStation Home - the Major's assuring that Microsoft will continue to work to stay on top of the online console online game. But CVG's wondering in which direction such "innovation" in Xbox Live will proceed, whether it will parallel the Second Life-eque Home or introduce a different concept entirely.

Or if it will continue to be the slow and steady, incremental improvements to what Xbox Live has always been all about: "the guide is always integrated, I can always view my messages, see who's online, cross-game invites across all games, leaderboards, achievement - all that kind of stuff," as the Major puts it.

Like he said: stay tuned.

Those of you who missed the Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 E3 Trailer during E3 are in luck! It's resurfaced today on the Marketplace in the form of the Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 Promotional Trailer. The preview trailer is the same one that was showcased in May except that after the Spring Update hit 360's most of the E3 trailers stopped working such as the Halo 3 Announcement Trailer. The DOAX2 trailer weighs in at 129.89 MB. The Xbox 360 exclusive, Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2 features all the DOA girls as they are ready to battle it out in the tropical waters of Zack's Island.

Some of the other activities that are included other than playing volleyball: the ability to race high-performance personal watercraft, compete in assorted and alluring activities, sunbathe on white sand beaches, go all-in at Zack's Casino and even play a version of capture the flag on the beach. Choose your own adventure on Zack's Island and play at your own leisure in this non-linear sequel. The game should be shipping before the end of the year. If you haven't seen the game in action, go ahead and head over to the Marketplace to check out the trailer.

Recently, Matt Lee, a software developer who works at MS' Xbox Division gave out an interview that covered the usual stuff- his life as a developer in MS' Xbox Division, the Xbox 360 Architecture, and the gaming marketplace. It's basic stuff, nothing really new and eye-popping, except for one comment that he made.

When he was asked about the somewhat disappointing launch of the Xbox 360 in Japan, poor sales reported by the retailers, and what does the Xbox team plan to do about that setback, Mr. Lee answered "Japan is obviously a very important market for us and one in which we have to work hard at. The main concern is getting the games that players in that market want to play."

He continued with this reply, "one thing to note, however, is that Japan is not necessarily the most important market for gaming these days. It is also not quite as large as the US and European markets. The Japanese market is very important to the Xbox 360 and we've got a whole bunch of great Japanese titles on the way from major Japanese developers. Both the Japanese and US markets are reaching saturation at this point. The big battleground for us (and for everyone) is going to be Europe."

Basically, his argument about Europe being more important makes sense. Europe is clearly the bigger market and has a stronger currency. With those factors at hand, you can't really blame them for that statement. I wonder how Japanese MS fanboys are going to react on this.

Other interesting points that were raised during the interview session was the overall future of the Xbox 360. When asked if the Xbox ever support downloading simultaneously with gameplay, the software developer answered that they've recently released " the Spring update that will deliver this feature along with many other nice new features for the dashboard and Guide. I've been beta-testing it at home, and it works very well. You can queue up a list of downloads and it just chugs through them in the background while you play games or watch movies." Although he declined to divulge some info about their plans on selling an increased capacity hard drive for the 360.

We've just received a breaking press release from the Microsoft's Xbox 360 team stating that the Spring update for the console will be tommorrow, 6th June 2006. Together with the release, we have a host of details to tell you about, including some of the 125 huge updates that will be available for Xbox Live connected users. In order to to get the update, your console must be connected to Xbox Live via a broadband connection, on either a Silver or Gold subscription. You do not need to have any disks, or a hard-drive taking use of built in memory dedicated to the running of the console. Downloading of the update takes a mere minute or two.

The update includes features to further unleash the power within your 360. Taking the media offerings, graphics capabilities and online content to a new level.  During the long months since the 360's release, Microsoft constantly listened and shaped things to the gamers' views. Constant feedback has allowed for these updates, and one can only hope that even more features would be included in future Xbox Live offerings.

View the whole list of updates plus the major ones after the Jump: