When Xbox Network began showing up on alpha testers dashboards a few days ago, people became rightly suspicious that Xbox was about to make a change. It turns out, they were.
Xbox Live has been the company’s online service name since its inception in 2002, but that is officially changing to Xbox Network. According to The Verge, this has been confirmed by the Xbox team with the following statement:
“’Xbox network’ refers to the underlying Xbox online service, which was updated in the Microsoft Services Agreement,” says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “The update from ‘Xbox Live’ to ‘Xbox network’ is intended to distinguish the underlying service from Xbox Live Gold memberships.”
Xbox is also planning to drop the free to play paywall in the coming months though no specific date has been provided. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more.
