Well the new dashboard update is out today and I've never been more unimpressed in my life. It seems the whole point of this update is a massive money-grabbing attempt by Microsoft. There isn't a single part of this that is designed as something for the players, and to show you, here is a list of the updates and the reasons why:

1. New Avatar Items to purchase - Well some might want to pay 80 points for a Halo 3 t-shirt that took a whole 2 minutes to design, I sure wont be. Let me know when I can buy spartan mjolnir armour, then well talk.
2. Games on Demand - £19.99 for Prey?!! WTF? New Zealand and Australia have it worse, they have to pay more than when the game was originally released for some of them! All of the games listed so far can be bought for at least half what they are charging. So why buy an overpriced digital copy you can never get rid of when you can have the real deal? I thought supplying games online was supposed to cut down manufacturing costs and get rid of the added retail cost that lets the stores make money. Well Microsoft has convinced me that I made the right decision when I said I'd never buy a retail game without the hard copy.
3. Gold Member Veteran status - If you've been a gold member for more than a year straight you'll notice you have a number next to your gamertag. "How will this make them money?" I hear you ask. Well kids, if at any time you break your gold status by letting your subscription run out, even if its only for a few minutes of silver, will make you lose your Veteran status. So this will ensure that people want keep their accounts Gold even when you aren't planning on using it.
4. More Marketplace stuff on the Web - Duh.
5. Community Ratings - A nice feature but pretty much speaks for itself. Just another thing to point out what you should be buying.
6. Avatar Awards - Can't comment on these yet but I'm sure Microsoft will find a way to get their grubby mitts on more of our pennies.

Now you should be about as unimpressed as I was after updating this morning. On a lighter note, I was mentioned on this weeks SentUAMessage in the UK, and have been spammed with friend requests ever since.