New 360 firmware update causing disc read errors in some consoles, replacements confirmed

A new dashboard update which is currently being served to beta testers is apparently preventing “a very small number of Xbox 360 owners from playing retail discs”. The news comes from a e-mail which was sent by MS to a tester who was a victim to the issue, and was offered a new Xbox 360 250 GB S and a free year’s subscription to Xbox LIVE as compensation.

The Xbox Live update is expected to go live tomorrow in some regions. The update not only serves the purpose of anti-piracy measures, but also adds support to the new disc format as announced earlier by MS, which adds a hefty 1 GB of additional space on each disc.

If in case your Xbox does break when you install the next firmware update, rest assured, you will receive a replacement, a better model that too.

“Following a recent update to our system software, we have become aware of an issue that is preventing a very small number of Xbox 360 owners from playing retail game discs,” a Microsoft spokesperson told NowGamer.

“This issue manifests itself a as a unique “disc unreadable” or “disc unsupported” error on the screen. We are also able to detect this issue over Xbox LIVE and are proactively reaching out to customers that may be impacted to replace their console. Any Xbox 360 owners receiving this error are encouraged to contact us at www.xbox.com/support/contact so we can verify if the console has been impacted.”

Check out the full e-mail sent by MS Customer Support below.