With Microsoft's much talked-about Live dashboard update now out, it has emerged that the new Live Marketplace downloads released alongside the update will be restricted to Gold members for the duration of the first week of availability.

After seven days, the new content will be opened-up to Silver Live users, we today learn.

"That content will be available to Gold level exclusively for one week, after which Silver members will have access to the free content," revealed Microsoft's Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb on his blog.

"The Fall update has a special message to reflect this as well. 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 [BioShock] 'Ryan Industries Plasmids and Gene Tonics' content above) you'll have to wait until a week after the content is released to access it."

The move is of course designed to help 'persuade' Silver members to upgrade to paid-for Gold accounts, Hryb stating: "This is not done to annoy our Silver members-limited time exclusive access to content is just one of the many benefits of having a Gold account."

By Luke Guttridge