As recently "announced" (as far as I can tell it's the first official word that there will be updates in XBLCG), we will be able to issue updates to our games on XBLCG. One idea I had initially thought of, since there is no automatic notification of updates, would be to refer people (from within my game) to visit a website and register their email address and/or GamerTag to receive notifications when my games are updated. However it's definitely in the prohibited list to use our games to collect personal information.

So while I'm aware this may be one of those legal questions, what is the thought on something like this? My game itself isn't collecting any personal data. I'm simply referring them to my website where they will be asked for either an email address or GamerTag to which I can send notifications of updates. Is this sort of mechanism allowed past that "collecting of personal information" rule?

You have to be able to point people at web sites -- say, for credits, or whatnot. Web sites regularly have areas where you can sign up for newsletters. I believe you're fine, because your game doesn't collect the personal information, and signing up on the web site is voloutary for the players.

I still like my idea of using a background network session to find other players, and compare their versions to yours, to auto-detect that there's an update :-)

jwatte:

I still like my idea of using a background network session to find other players, and compare their versions to yours, to auto-detect that there's an update :-)

I do like that idea and had thought of actually using the same mechanism to make my own version of an online leaderboard, however the issue quickly becomes that a session can only contain 30 players beyond the host. So my box would only get to take 30 players at a time to notify them of updates. To me that seems rather inefficient especially if my game is decently popular. If I can get the users to give me an email address (or better yet, their GamerTag) I can easily write a program to mass message all of them that an update has been released and instruct them to re-download the game (or, in the emails, link them directly to my game's page on Xbox.com).