New Xbox 360 Disc Format Promises More Storage, But It's Not Blu-ray

[admin]

Microsoft is testing a new disc format for its Xbox 360 console, but it's not Blu-ray.

For years, there has been rumours that the Xbox 360 will adopt Blu-ray, rumours that mostly come from the Blu-ray/PS3 camp, and Microsoft has resisted this action, even when HD DVD, the format they supported, failed.

And with games getting bigger and bigger, some Xbox 360 games are already coming out on multiple DVDs, compared to just a single Blu-ray disc for the PS3 version.

And Microsoft aims to alleviate this problem, slightly, by calling for beta-testers on a new disc format - the US based testers, as a reward, get a copy of Halo Reach for free. The new disc is capable of an extra 1GB of data by using an allocation on the disc previously used for anti-piracy stuff, taking the amount of available storage to the maximum dual-layer DVDs can support, 7.95GB (up from the 6.8GB currently available). The testers may also get a version of Halo Reach that has extra content, to fill up the 7.95GB for testing purposes.

More:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/223712/xbox_360_dvds_get_1gb_extra_space_in_dashboard_update.html

[drfsupercenter]

I signed up to test it.

So that means they'll have LESS anti-piracy? The articles I read said they'd have more, likely.

[admin]

I think MS is changing the DRM - the current one doesn't really work anyway. It appears the new DRM framework won't required the 1GB security partition to work any more, hence the usable disc size increase.