The scratched disc problem will become irrelevant in the near future as the market goes more and more towards digital copies.
Even if this case was formerly dismissed by a lower court in 2012, the Xbox 360 scratched disk lawsuit goes to the Supreme Court following the ruling of an appeal court. The base of this lawsuit was created back in 2008 when over 55,000 users claimed that the gaming console scratched their discs, making them unplayable.
The reason why this was viewed as a class-action lawsuit stems for the alleged fact that Microsoft knew that the Xbox 360 console had a design flaw which made it scratch discs on certain occasions but chose not to disclose it. The main design flaw is the amount of disc movement that occurs while playing a game, depending on how you place your console (horizontally or vertically).
This flaw was known by Microsoft, according to the statement of Hiroo Umeno, a manager of the company. But due to the fact that its reproduction rate was minimal, happening in only 0.4% of cases, the company chose to keep that information a secret.
Because the 0.4% chance that your disc might get scratched is so small, as well as the low amount of people who filed the lawsuit, a federal judge decided that class-action litigation is unwarranted, back in 2012. Of course, Microsoft claimed throughout the period that the disc scratching phenomenon was based only on the consumers’ mishandling of their product, not being linked in any way to any design flaw.
Even if the Xbox 360 is reaching the end of its lifespan, most gamers still have one of these gaming consoles at home, alongside its next-gen counterpart, the Xbox One. If Microsoft loses the class-action lawsuit and is forced to disclose that a design flaw can potentially lead to the discs getting scratched, consumers might stop using the console altogether.
The gamer demographic has known that the gaming console has problems even if Microsoft refused to admit it. Besides the alleged disc scratching issue, console crashes have been par of the course when it comes to the 360. The phenomenon called Red Ring Of Death, where the console simply becomes unusable due to hardware issues, has been around ever since the Xbox 360 hit the markets almost 10 years ago.
Even so, this did not stop users from playing games on the console in any way. They just kept in mind that there is a very slight chance that the Xbox 360 might break their discs or might simply shut down and become just a useless brick of plastic.
Although the Xbox 360 scratched disk lawsuit goes to the Supreme Court, it is still completely unclear in who’s favor the court will rule. The result of this lawsuit will more or less be publicly available once the case completes in the next couple of years.
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