via Games Industry


Microsoft employees knew of a disc damaging fault in the Xbox 360 before putting the console on the market, a recently unsealed document involved in an ongoing lawsuit suggests.

The US class-action lawsuit, launched in July 2007, demands compensation from the software giant for a design flaw in the Xbox 360 that results in damaged discs when the machine is tilted.

According to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the document, a declaration by Microsoft's program manager Hiroo Umeno, suggests the company knew that discs could be damaged when the Xbox 360 was reoriented.

"This is ... information that we as a team, optical disc drive team, knew about," said Umeno. "When we first discovered the problem in September or October (2005), when we got a first report of disc movement, we knew this is what's causing the problem."