Microsoft Removes Facebook & Twitter Apps From Xbox 360 Marketplace

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Microsoft Removes Facebook & Twitter Apps From Xbox 360 Marketplace

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has made a bold move by removing the Xbox 360’s Facebook and Twitter apps from their Marketplace. This change was made when Microsoft rolled out a new version of Xbox 360 dashboard earlier this week.

These apps are now no longer listed in the console’s list of apps available for download. Surely many people are going to miss these two apps. It seems that Microsoft has made such a move to boost the usage of Internet Explorer 9 and this is evident from the company’s statement as given to Neowin:

We are retiring the Facebook and Twitter apps. Xbox LIVE subscribers will have the ability to access these sites through Internet Explorer on Xbox, available through the Web Hub located on the new dashboard.

If Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) really wants to increase the usage of its browser, then the company could have found a better way to do this and removing the apps from the Marketplace is not exactly a solution. Those who want to access these social networking sites will now need to use Internet Explorer. This strange move by Microsoft will confuse many users and degrade the Xbox experience.

Users who have previously downloaded the Facebook app can still launch it and use it but cannot re-download the app. Since the Twitter app is web-based, the app was never downloaded to the hard drive and thus users won’t face any problem here. Both the apps were not updated from a long time but at least they gave some convenience to the user.

This is a bad move by Microsoft. If you are Xbox user, then do you use these apps or do you use the browser to access Facebook and Twitter? Let us know in the comments.

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