The good Major posted on his blog that from now on, all Xbox LIVE Silver members will have to wait one week before getting their hands on new Marketplace content like demos and such. After the recent Dashboard update, new content will be exclusive to Gold members only for one week. After that, Silver member can download the content for free.

This happened to a few demos here and there before but looks like it’s official policy now. The Dashboard update even has a special message for this, as you can see from the above picture.

The Major explains: “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.”

He also added that this is not done to annoy the Silver members and that limited time exclusive access to new content is just one of the many benefits of having a Gold account. And Microsoft benefits from this too - the more Gold members Xbox LIVE has, the more bragging rights they get.