Microsoft are to clamp down on Xbox Live users trying to access content not available to them locally with Monday's Spring Update, as well as rolling out various tweaks and improvements.

The update, due imminently, will mean that users in the habit of signing up for Live accounts "located" in other countries, and subsequently downloading content reserved for those areas, will now be blocked from doing this. So, for example, if John lives in the UK and previously had set up a USA account to access US-targeted content, he will now lose this ability and only be able to access content targeted at the UK.

A statement on Microsoft's own Gamerscoreblog explained:

"As a general policy we try to get global rights to content, but in some cases, it's not possible because of legal restrictions. In other instances, we have to get legal rights on a country-by-country basis, which unfortunately results with us having content on the service that has to be filtered based on geographical location."

and added:

"We understand that this may be frustrating for some users, and hope they understand our responsibility, and the necessary security requirements that need to be in place in order to comply with applicable laws and honor our agreements with content providers."

The update's new features include Windows Live Messenger, new download controls, the ability to switch aspect ratio during video playback, and a couple of other tweaks.

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