Microsoft Adding New Disc Format to Thwart Piracy

Kris Erickson • Mar 30, 2011 • Comments ()

Microsoft's Major Nelson has revealed that the company is preparing to roll out a new DVD disc format called XGD3. Existing Xbox 360 owners will be able to use the new media following a firmware upgrade. Several thousand beta testers will receive a free copy of Halo: Reach with which to try out the new discs. If you live in the United States and you are interested in participating in the beta, you can check it out here.

Hackers claim to have additional information about the new format. According to one who goes by the name c4eva, these new disks will feature more content integrity checks, more AP passes, an additional copy protection layer and as a bonus, perhaps a bit more actual space on the disc. Clearly, this new technology is intended to thwart pirates from ripping, copying and distributing disc images, particularly for future high-profile game releases.

Will the XGD3 format actually stop hackers? One potential weakness with the system is that it is designed to be read by a standard DVD player laser (since Xbox owners won't need to upgrade their hardware). That means that with some clever firmware hacks, regular DVD drives should be able to read these discs. Writing to the disc will be impossible as nobody will have access to blank XGD3 media. But perhaps clever pirates will find a way to 'spoof' the new discs while using a plain old DVD.

The war between freeloading pirates and merciless multinational corporations goes on...