Xbox Live downtime planned as Tsunami rolls in

Microsoft's Xbox Live online console service will be shut down for 24 hours later this week in order to allow the company's engineers time to install the new Xbox Live 3.0 functionality, codenamed "Tsunami".

The new Xbox Live features will require that users download a patch the next time they connect to the service, and will include some functions which have been discussed by the company since E3 last year.

Functions added by the Tsunami update include more advanced support for "clans" of players, integration with the MSN Messenger chat service on PCs and a system allocating a small amount of server-side storage space for individual users (so they can store their configuration files and so on).

However, the bulk of these features will not be immediately available to players, as they need to be integrated into individual games by the developers - the functionality of older titles will not change. Microsoft expects the first games to support the features to appear in a matter of months, as development SDKs for Xbox Live 3.0 went out to developers several months ago.