We have now officially confirmed that those users lucky enough to get into the test for the Xbox update are already starting to get the update downloaded to their consoles. From what have personally seen, the process was painless; and in the case we saw, it was completed in less than ten minutes with no problems. So far, from what we are hearing, Microsoft seems to be off to a good start.

In other news, our friends tell us that the Twitter and Facebook applications for the Xbox 360 will appear before Christmas. When they are released, they will be available as separate standalone downloads, and the decision not to add them as part of an update seems to have more to do with space than anything else. The reason is that some users are still running on very limited space with Arcade units with limited flash memory or with 20GB hard drives that are full; therefore, making the download optional does not force these users to download and install the application, thus wasting space.

Microsoft has decided to give something back for those that purchase all of the titles in the Summer of Arcade promotion. If you purchase Splosion Man, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-shelled, Trails HD, and Shadow complex between now and August 31st, they will put 800 Microsoft Points into your Xbox Live Account. Basically, we think of it as a buy four and get one free deal. This is not a bad idea for Microsoft to boost sales of the Summer of Arcade titles.

One last bit of Xbox Live news came our way about a strange Xbox Live bug of some sort that wiped out all of the Halo Wars Leaderboards and reset everyone’s statistics. While we can confirm that this did actually happen, and Robot Entertainment is sorry that it did, we don’t know much more beyond that. We hear that the Xbox Live team is investigating and looking at the possibility of trying to restore things from a backup or something, but we have little clues yet as to what actually happened. This is a huge bummer that could become a final reality for you Halo Wars players.