Dutch consumer protection agency Kassa sues Microsoft on behalf of thousands of Dutch consumers. Due to an ongoing lawsuit in the United States, internal Microsoft emails revealed that Microsoft already knew about disc scratching issues before release in 2005.

Kassa demonstrated earlier during tests 360s could scratch discs even in super steady laboratory conditions, all recorded on tape.

http://www.telegraaf.nl/digitaal/games/2983060/__Kassa_onderneemt_collectieve_actie_tegen_Microsoft__.html?p=22,1

Also related:

Microsoft at CES 2009 demos Halo Wars:

^Kassa is a pretty powerful TV-program in Holland. At the very least it means very bad PR for MS. Kassa has a viewing percentage of 10%, which is pretty high for that kind of program.

I am watching the program now. The boy's dad who sued Microsoft as talked about in the original post apparently got a complete refund on bought console, games and lawsuit costs.

Others who didn't go that far were treated badly. More about that later.

Guess I am lucky, because my 360 has never hurt my games. (I haven't even got RROD yet)

my 360 only hurt the first game I ever bought thats cause while on somehow I decided it was a good idea to turn the console vertical while game was still inside spinning around...

I took game back to the store the following day and said somehow my 360 scratched it and got a new replacement... *cough*

hmm come to think of it also had a problem with Mass Effect and Fable II discs.. they both became unreadable... when I took out both discs they had a ring line (of about 4 mm wide) going around the disc which I thought the 360 had permanently caused but I was able to firmly rub it off and they worked again.

So I know the main causes for me are either moving the 360 while disc is spinning or the lens mechanism parts are touching the 360 because of certain games that are data intensive but they are not scratches its smudge marks..

also living near a train line or motorway probably doesn't help much if you house vibrates...

but anyway I dont have any disc problems now since games are installed to the HDD...

Aren't there like 1000 class action lawsuits against Microsoft for 360 failures?  Isn't this relatively old news?  I've had a disc scratching 360 and it was quite difficult to get them to cover it under warranty.  They did replace my console and they did replace the Halo 3 disc as it was requested that I send it in with the console.  Maybe EU service is much worse but Microsoft always seems to take care of me, just sometimes it takes a little more patience and explanation than others.

Some snips from US Microsoft employee testimonials:

"This is information we as a team, optical disc drive team, knew about."

"360 was routinely scratching discs"

OMG they completely screwed people, they put in drives known to have the same problems. Just to give customers the idea they get a new device (paying 100 dollars!).

"Just to give the customer a new optical drive, so that from a customer perspective they're getting a new device and that improves customer satisfaction"

........... Wow............

From the four people i know who have an Xbox, all have had to be replaced at least once and in one case four times. To be fair though, these people bought the Xbox soon after its release, play crazy hours on it, and still swear by it, even if it does have the tendency to break down.

Microsoft will be very reluctant to go to court over an issue like this as if they lose there will be a huge flood of similar cases and they could be out a lot of money.

I play crazy hours on mine but i also know that getting some of those hard achievements means resetting the 360 40+ times and retrying till you get it.. especially on those that like their 1000/1000 achievements can cause strain on the 360