Free Xbox Live Weekend Starting April 1st? Fooled You!

Hardcore Xbox Live gamers might be in for a really cruel joke on April Fools' Day, not because of a maintenance suspention of their favorite service or anything like that, but because of a massive n00b invasion forming on the horizon, threatening to ruin their Call of Duty 2 and Project Gotham Racing 3 sessions on the Xbox 360.

The details are not yet finalized but, according to some stories from a few days ago, April 1st will mark the beginning of the first "Free Xbox Live Gold Weekend", meaning 72 hours in which Xbox Live Silver subscribers will be treated as full-fledged Gold members, able to play games online as they wish (instead of just downloading demos, trailers and stuff like that), before deciding if they're going to spend $8 a month or $50 a year for a Xbox Live Gold subscription.

The April 1st date isn't final however, since Microsoft didn't make any pompous announcement as of yet, except for adding the "Free Xbox Live Gold Weekend" to the calendar of events from the official Xbox website, a few days ago. At the moment the calendar doesn't show anything planned for that weekend anymore, though GamesIndustry.biz managed to at least confirm with a Microsoft spokesperson that this event will only be available to American gamers, not it Europe:

"This is an American only event sponsored by Verizon. (...) There are no current plans for the same event in Europe and we do not have any announcements to make at the moment."

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)