Xbox 360's New Disc Format Increases Storage - Report

Plenty of guessing took place yesterday as to what the newXbox 360 disc formatwould actually change. According to reports, it will still be a DVD, but it will allow for an additional gigabyte of storage to be used by developers, as well as enhancing anti-piracy measures.

Just 6.8GB of a standard, dual-layer DVD (with a maximum storage capacity of 7.95GB) is able to be used for Xbox 360 games due to more than 1GB being dedicated to an anti-piracy partition, according toDigital Foundry. While it's unclear what exactly is being changed from a technical standpoint, the new disc format will provide developers with an allotment of almost 15% more space for storing games.

Corroborating the suggestion that the storage capacity will increase is noteworthy Xbox hacker commodore4eva.Riptenreports c4eva stated that the new format will also bring new safeguards against piracy:"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"

Additional space is certainly nice, but having almost 8GB of storage available still pales in comparison to the capacity of the PlayStation 3's Blu-ray discs. (Of course, that has its drawbacks as well, as seen by the number of PS3 games that include mandatory installs.)

A Microsoft preview program for the new disc format is set to begin sometime in the next two weeks. Thousands of testers will be accepted to help test the format, with all participants receiving a free copy ofHalo Reach-- presumably in the new format --"along with other possible rewards"for helping.

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