Microsoft is running a public preview program to test out "an updated Xbox 360 disc format".
"We are conducting an open call for US based participants* for a public preview to help us prepare for an updated Xbox 360 disc format," Major Nelson announced today.
PS3's Blu-ray format holds up to 50GB on a dual-layer, which allowed games like Final Fantasy XIII to feature higher quality sound and cutscenes due to its ample space. Could MS be preparing a higher-density disc for the Xbox?
It offers no further details, with the Major saying: "This is an important update as we continually strive to improve our products and we could not do so without the help of our great Xbox community."
You don't have to do it for free, either. "As part of the preview program, you will receive a copy of Halo: Reach along with other possible rewards," explained Nelson.
MS is calling for "multiple thousands of participants" so it says your chances of getting into the beta are pretty good although it's currently only open to US-based gamers. Xbox Live Silver members can apply, but priority will be given to Gold members so don't fancy your chances.
Head over to this page to sign yourself up.
MS has also recently detailed new technology that may help make Kinect faster at reading your movements.
Comments
43 comments so far...
Black Mantis on 29 Mar '11 said:
Sucks that we can't test it over here. I wonder how they've updated the discs though?
originalbadboy on 29 Mar '11 said:
Pointless article considering its 'US only'
BenThomasFoster on 29 Mar '11 said:
US only intreging to know what it does
Pokeymike on 29 Mar '11 said:
My guess is a new format which:
a. Increases available capacity without affecting security
or
b. Increases available capacity with new security
or
c. Just new security.
Or that the fact they require lots of participants means they will be doing something that will push the 360's DVD drive to operating limits, and they need to see how many people out there will have x-boxes that won't be able to cope with it.
BenThomasFoster on 29 Mar '11 said:
US only. intrigued to know what it does though.
metallicorphan on 29 Mar '11 said:
so,now they are giving away free games to US only...f**king ridiculous,they also get free games when they sign up for XBLG for the year and 20% off
screw you MS!!!
TOKEN on 29 Mar '11 said:
HD dvd?
shiwayb on 29 Mar '11 said:
Not possible with current drive...duh....
altitude2k on 29 Mar '11 said:
New encoding, perhaps?
Probably security, though.
DaKellyFella on 29 Mar '11 said:
Well this could be Microsoft utilising the entire disc instead of what they use (6.8GB for some reason). So my guess would be that they use the full 8.6 or whatever it is
kmcroc on 29 Mar '11 said:
pick me pick me, enjoy this testing stuff, wonder if the new format would be greater than the Blu-ray the PS use's.that would be cool, i will be able to join the millions who no longer have to get up off the couch to put in the next game disk. my prayers have been answered. lol
De Mann on 29 Mar '11 said:
Probably just a new disc format that's more scratch resistant.
Padua on 29 Mar '11 said:
Just make sure you support Blu-Ray with your next console MS and stop with the BS.
metallicorphan on 29 Mar '11 said:
by the time the next xbox console will be out,Blu Ray will probably be second best,there have been reports last year already that Blu-Rays successor is already in the making,i am glad i didn't get rid of my 1000+ DVDs to upgrade to Blu-Ray
De Mann on 29 Mar '11 said:
I think the next generation consoles will be cartridge or card based and will have no disc drive at all..
a3HeadedMonkey on 29 Mar '11 said:
This.
StonecoldMC on 29 Mar '11 said:
I'll go with Option C.
I would be amazed if MS can do anything that increases the storage capacity of a DVD., amazed!
voodoo341 on 29 Mar '11 said:
When's April Fools Day?
BenJy on 29 Mar '11 said:
Only took them 5 years to realize this? They can keep it.
Troo Gamer on 29 Mar '11 said:
Just what we need another format. So hat happens to all the upcoming Blu Ray releases? Blu Ray will be here until digital takes over.
MS may in future consoles get away with new format for games but movies will stick with blu ray due to costs and companies involved as well as studio support
JAKEevans on 29 Mar '11 said:
Green ray! You heard it here first!
Osiris25 on 29 Mar '11 said:
I don't think there is any way they can increase the size of DVD's for the drive without changing the Laser and other hard components, software alone wouldn't be able to do it. Unless Microsoft secretly put a special laser in the machine that can read more data (highly unlikely) the very most they could do is have stronger more efficient de/compressing software to cram more onto a disc. Whatever the case its not an issue for me, they are only a handful of games that come on multiple discs and the one that do only require you to change disc once or twice at the most during the whole game. Its not like the old days of continuous disc swapping and its only as inconvenient as changing the disc for another when you want to play something different. I do laugh when I see PS3 fan boys waving blu-ray in the face of 360 owners (I am a neutral who owns all 3 home consoles) at not having to change discs, it still nowhere as irritating as the 20 minute installs that many PS3 games have with little improvement to loading times?
Barca Azul on 29 Mar '11 said:
Hmmmm, I thought the future was digital?
I think they know that people still want disks.
What about reading newly compressed data? A bit like a zip file.
A3RO_DYNAMIK on 29 Mar '11 said:
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/1128 ... k-why.aspx
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/114394/tosh ... dvd-format
Pokeymike on 29 Mar '11 said:
@StonecoldMC
No I'm sure Microsoft can't perform a miracle like that, however only 6.8 or so gb is currently available for games, but they may be able to allow more (up to DVD max) without compromising the security.
Or the whole thing could be rubbish of course. Perhaps each Xbox disc will now come with a picture of Major Nelson imprinted on the front doing a Kinect pose.
Nitramuse on 29 Mar '11 said:
There is a slight chance that they'll be able to push the boundries of the DVD just a bit more. Much like CD's, typically at a max of 700MB, however there are 900MB versions out there.
So maybe with a firmware update they can increase the read-capacity. They still need to produce these 'special' DVD's though, so this'll be highly unlikely.
Like stated above, maybe they'll use the full 8,5GB, but honestly I don't think you'll need a firmware update for that.
My guess is a new type of compression....Or something like the GD-ROM used by the Dreamcast.
damoxuk on 29 Mar '11 said:
I seriously doubt there will be another physical media format for movies/games after Blu-ray imo. There's "always" rumours but as blu-ray is only like 15-20% market share in movies no one is gonna even think of a new format.
In which case Blu-rays have been trialled to offer upto 300gb so newer consoles/players will just use the bigger size discs.
And on topic not sure how they can sqeeze more out of the DVD discs?
DZimpact on 30 Mar '11 said:
My best guess would be that they are going to extend the readable surface of the disk (like the Dreamcast GB disk on CD) and/or add a third layer to the disk (4.7 GB x 3).
I would be less than shocked to see the new format reach 14 or 15 GB.
TOKEN on 30 Mar '11 said:
Not if you add HD to DVD ....duh
TOKEN on 30 Mar '11 said:
This could be an ms paper trail,because ninty?and sony use bluray,broadband speeds are not quite with everyone yet maybe 6/10 years time with price decrease it would strenghen sales on ps3 or even wii 2?if ms annouced bluray for next console??
HVC disc may come to 720 but not before and can handle 20-200 times morew than bluray.
Ninja Wolfman on 30 Mar '11 said:
May be HVD, 500GB storage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc
backcue on 30 Mar '11 said:
Its wont be HVD because they won't be released mainstream, not for another 6-8 years. Blu-Ray has already been out for 4-5years so it has about a 10-13year lifecycle. My guess is pushing the capacity to 8.6GB... Good News for you xBots out there if that means less compression! With Kinect and now this, its looks like a very strong year for M$!
steven_h1 on 30 Mar '11 said:
According to Major Nelson:-
Hashbrown on 30 Mar '11 said:
Surely its no different to the firmware update the PS3 got to make it possible to read 3D Blurays, I'm sure they have bigger capacity to standard Blurays.
Its got a 16x speed drive so maybe slowing it down would allow it to read another layer, load speed would probably suffer but once the games installed it shouldn't make any difference.
I can't imagine MS needing such a massive beta if they are just using more of the DVD space in place of security. Its not like the people signing up are going to tell MS they find it easier to hack now.
Nomad44 on 30 Mar '11 said:
It's got to be something like slow it down and triple the layers.
And I agree that it's pushing the DVD drive to it's limits so they need lots of testers to see if it'll break any of the different types of 360s out there. Especially the older ones.
As for the future of gaming - that's digital downloads - cut out the retailers and second hand games market, which hurts the publishes/developers more than piracy!
gobbybobby on 30 Mar '11 said:
Well they sure are trying to extend the life of the horribly outdated old tech the Xbox uses. Come on just release the Xbox 720 already!
HarryPothead on 30 Mar '11 said:
Hmm.. After reading this news report this morning, and various others, I got a little excited.
Although, I was completely let down by reading this.
SOURCE
Although, I doubt they'll make this move. Who wants a disc with no label?
Going to DVD-18 would be a marketing and technological down-grade for Microsoft. It would be like they're giving in to the restrictions DVDs impose and the space that Blu-Ray offers. It would flag up all sorts of flame-boy PS3 wars around the world. "Microsoft suck! They have to use dual-sided discs!" - You've seen the Metal Gear Solid mock-up where there were something like 36 discs - http://www.stopgeek.com/wp-content/uplo ... 3/mgs4.png
Plus, their discs wouldn't be pretty anymore; in-stead replaced by two shiny sides with confusing lettering around the inside circle; much like DVDs that are printed on both sides for 4:3 and 16:9.
One good example: Beetle Juice. Go buy a copy. There's two sides on it. Do you put the 16:9 label down for 16:9? Or have the 16:9 label up for 16:9? It will confuse gamers. Microsoft don't want that.
I'd say they're more into moving into something like this:
Versatile Multilayer Disc.
It makes more sense. It still uses the same red laser that DVDs use, but it just utilises more layers within the disc. All you need is a firmware update to existing technology, which Microsoft can readily distribute.
I found a news report many moons ago saying that Microsoft and Toshiba (or another large disc and hardware manufacturer) were R&Ding into a format similar to VMD, or had bought the VMD rights themselves and started doing development on it.
I believe all progress on VMD has been halted, allowing Microsoft to step in and buy up anything that is even remotely DVD 2.0 related.
Cheers,
Jamie.
altitude2k on 30 Mar '11 said:
Apparently they're opening up more space that was locked to security. Adds an extra 1GB to total capacity.
BenJy on 30 Mar '11 said:
To tackle piracy I don't see why they don't just engineer and produce a unique lazer and disc drive for a new/next 360 model and not sell them to the public as stand alone players.
martinawatson on 30 Mar '11 said:
manky on 30 Mar '11 said:
#fw <Zync> so what do u think about new disc format ?
#fw <c4eva-> MS will introduce xgd3 this will add more ap checks, cvi (content integerity) checks, increase the disc size and adds a new layer for protection issues all in the 20500 sdk! bring it on!
#fw <JeeBoy> C4 will this effect the launch of Slim lt? will it be delayed for some reason?
#fw <c4eva-> jeeboy:No
#fw <c4eva-> will know more once we get one of these new discs!
Nitramuse on 30 Mar '11 said:
And this is a chat between....
EDIT: wow...XGD3 is just...the same DVD, with 1GB more space and a better security...that 1GB wouldn't help at all, will it...so it's safe to say it's just about the anti-piracy...
manky on 30 Mar '11 said:
I'll leave you to work out the answer to that incredibly complex question yourself.
Or perhaps read the chat log and then maybe do a search on 'c4eva' and then maybe post your answer...