Microsoft Seeks Testers For Xbox 360 System Update, Updated Disc FormatMicrosoft Seeks Testers For Xbox 360 System Update, Updated Disc Format

Microsoft is seeking volunteers to test out a preview version of a new Xbox 360 System Update which will reportedly "help us prepare for an updated Xbox 360 disc format." Xbox Live director of programming Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb announced the preview program on his blog, saying the company is seeking "multiple thousands of participants" from among U.S. Xbox Live members with linked windows Live IDs. A Microsoft representative refused to comment on the precise nature of the "updated Xbox 360 disc format" mentioned in Hryb 's post, merely echoing Hryb 's assertion that "Microsoft is continually striving to improve our products and could not do so without the help of our Xbox community." The Xbox 360 uses a dual-layer DVD drive which can read discs containing up to 9 GB of data, but only 7 GB of that space is usable by developers. Collected game install size data suggests recent release Call of Duty: Black Ops comes closest to maximizing that space, taking up 6.9 GB when installed to an Xbox 360 hard drive from a single disc. An analysis by Digital Foundry found Microsoft's Alan Wake packed roughly 80 minutes of pre-rendered cut scene content onto 3.74 GB of disc space. The disc format update could also be related to Microsoft's efforts to combat piracy on the system. A recent internet traffic study from TorrentFreak suggests the most popular Xbox 360 titles were downloaded illegally over a million times in 2010. A now-discontinued HD-DVD add-on drive for the Xbox 360 was used exclusively to play movies and could not be used to store game content.