It's that time again when the "rumor" list of changes for the spring dashboard update leaks out. Is it true? Who knows, but it looks like the direction Microsoft has been heading the 360 for some time. The full list of changes can be read here; however, I will go more in depth into the Xbox Live Arcade specific changes. I have split it into five sections DRM, Integrated File Sharing, Achievements, Speed/Usability Improvements and Game Updates.

DRM Woes Are Gone?
Rejoice! The spring update brings many updates to the DRM that put it leaps ahead of anything that has been done in the console world before. First up is the ability to automatically associate new DRM to items downloaded for free. I scratched my head on this one for a bit, but since it is after the "ability to see what items will not work offline due to DRM license changing" I'm wondering if this gives us the ability to make the console the primary console for the items? What do you think as it could be read a million ways?

Integrated File Sharing
File sharing for selected titles on Xbox Live will be integrated into the system. One can only assume this will be similiar to the way that Halo 3 had it's file sharing system setup. This may broaden the ability for this to more titles like Band of Bugs and N+, which had no way of distributing their user generated content. This could represent a step forward in Microsoft's stance on user generated content.

Achievements
In the fall update Microsoft stopped Xbox Live Arcade trial games from being added to our gamertag. Now the rumor is that we will be able to delete games with 0 achievements and 0 gamer score. This should relieve some of the clutter.

Speed/Usability Improvements
One very annoying thing for users with lots of games (anyone reading this site) is the extremely long time it takes to completely fill your games list. On last check, my games list takes about 5 seconds to fully load (give or take). The spring update is rumored to bring about a preloading of the games library upon dashboard bootup. I'm curious to see how this will effect dash update; however, I can see the amount of time they have between going from the Live dash to the Games dash. Another usability improvement is the ability to have more ways of filtering our "My Games" section.

Game Updates
Game updates will just randomly come out for Xbox Live Arcade titles with no word on just what happenned. What if there was an option to look at your game updates on your hard drive and the option to delete them? That's starting to get to the point where there is a bit more transparency in the update system. Here's to hoping this is true and Fall will bring update a complete transparent list of what an update does.

[Via Joystiq]