[Update: My tone was unnecessarily harsh in the original article. I merrily apologize for any readers offended by that, and offer an article that’s a bit more fair. <3]
Microsoft’s upcoming Firmware update will ruin a few older Xbox 360 consoles, making them unable to read retail discs. That’s according to the platform holder, but never fear — it’ll be replacing shittier, older consoles with new 250GB consoles.
The latest update renders “a very small number” of Xbox 360s unable to read retail discs. Microsoft has said that it will be replacing any older, affected consoles with newer ones.
“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,” said the company. “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.”
The issue relates to the fact that the latest update will rewrite the disc drive in order to use a new, pirate-fighting DVD format. Fighting the losing battle against piracy is worth giving away hardware, apparently.
It’s almost like those annoying, “I have a launch console and it never red-ringed” people are getting their smug boast taken away from them. Microsoft has said that anybody affected can reach out via the Xbox support site. So do that.
You never got this with an NES.
360 firmware incompatible with older consoles [GI.biz]
Published: May 18, 2011 08:20 am