Back at E3 2009 Microsoft announced that Facebook and Twitter would be integrated into the Xbox 360 dashboard. Speaking with Eurogamer Microsoft’s James Halton revealed that both services are due sometime this autumn, but didn’t give an exact release date. However, apparently they will arrive “before Christmas”.

Now, you may wonder why they’re not part of the dashboard update coming later next month (currently being trialled by a selection of Xbox Live users). The reason is that both will be separate applications so will launch separately, much like when a game is released on Xbox Live Arcade. In that way they want be that intrusive if you don’t want to use the services.

Personally I’m tired of people saying “What’s the point? We can do this on our PC”. You can also play games on your PC, but that doesn’t mean you always want to. It’s just another way of updating your Facebook/Twitter when you’re not at your PC and I’m all for that. I’m not sure my friends on both sites will want to know what game I’m currently playing, but it’s still a cool feature nonetheless. Although, do separate applications mean we won’t be able to update our Facebook/Twitter from inside the game? Even if it’s updated automatically? It doesn’t sound nearly half as good if that’s the case.

There’s no word on the Last.fm or Sky integration yet, but hopefully they won’t take too long to arrive.

In other news the DSi now has Facebook intergration (also announced at E3), but it’s Japan only for the moment.