This is great news, because as soon as it’s confirmed that he’s not lying or being crazy again (you have to wonder, since the interview this news comes from also mentions his vision of a “cyberworld”), that’ll be the day Xbox Live becomes free.

I think somebody ought to tell Ken that, though. I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to fight a war of revenue attrition with Microsoft.

After a miscued announcement last week, Perfect Dark Zero now really does have four new multiplayer maps available for download on Ye Olde 360 Marketplace. Though it would seem that the entire point of the Microsoft Points micropayment system would be that each level could be purchased separately for 125 points, “GasPlant,” “Plaza,” “Rooftops,” and “Trench” are available only as a pack for 500 Microsoft Points (aka $6.25). Enjoy, suckers.

In about 3.5 hours, Live will start pushing the new dashboard to 360 users. The availability is staggered over four hours, so if you’re staying up late— well first of all, go to bed, and second of all, don’t panic if you don’t get any prompt right at 2AM Pacific.

There’s a lot of good improvements, like queueing multiple demos and other Marketplace goodies to download in the background (and pausing the download if you’re playing a multiplayer game), letting your custom music continue to play as a game loads (and pick up where it left off if the game overrides custom soundtracks). You know, stuff that actually takes advantage of the multi-processor architecture.

Then there’s the ones that really, really should have been there all along, like the audio player remembering its volume settings or the DVD player bookmarking where you left off when a disc is ejected.

Then there’s the scary ones like “Better support for Xbox 360 game disc recognition”.

Read – Dashboard Changelog [Xbox.com]