After Microsoft Corp. recently upgraded firmware of its Xbox 360 game console a certain amount of game systems could not read discs with video games. The software company now offers to replace game consoles that cannot recognize retail game discs for free.

"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. 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," a statement by Microsoft reads, reports Eurogamer web-site (Kotaku has a confirmation about the issue).

The world's top software company will "replace [incompatible] machines with a brand new Xbox 360 S with 250GB hard drive", according to Eurogamer, but their owners will need to get in touch with Microsoft using a special form on the Xbox web-site. Naturally, not all disc read errors are related to firmware, which means that the company is not recalling certain batch of Xbox 360 machines.

Previously dual-layer DVDs for Xbox 360 had 6.8GB capacity, while typical dual-layer DVD-Video discs have up to 7.95GB capacity. Over 1GB partition was reserved for DVD-Video, anti-piracy security sectors and so on. The recent system update enabled support for the so-called XBG3 discs that allow usage of the "extra" gigabyte, introduce new security features and add  "a new layer for protection issues", according to media reports.

Additional capacity will allow Microsoft to pack more content onto optical discs for the Xbox 360. In particular, games will be able to feature more rich graphics or longer gameplay.

Tags: Microsoft, Xbox, XGD3