According to Xbox community leader Major Nelson, the recent Fall Update for 360 has brought a change to the way Xbox Live Silver accounts work. If you have a Silver (i.e. free) Live account, then new demos and content will not be made available to you immediately. The content will be available exclusively to Gold members for a week, after which Silver accounts will have access to the content.

If you have a Silver account and you see a piece of content that has a red circle with a slash through it (like the ‘Ryan Industries Plasmids and Gene Tonics’ content above) you’ll have to wait until a week after the content is released to access it.

Nelson added that this change wasn’t made to “annoy” Silver members, but only to increase the benefits of having a Gold account. What a way to start the holiday season, huh?

FYI: Free Xbox Live Marketplace content and Silver accounts [Major Nelson]

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