Well, assuming that is all true, I will definitely not buy a 360. I have two young kids, and they move about a great deal. Vibration central, here, and occassionally things get knocked. If the above really does cause scratched DVDs, most of mine would be screwed in a few months for certain.

Not cool.

However, this could possibly be a bit of anti-MS bias. All of the big companies have their detractors, and it is easy for such people to latch onto a few bad stories and inflate them somewhat. Is there anyone with kids and 360s out there who can confirm this? If so, do your kids do the following (or similar):

My 4-year old plays our PS3 a great deal. It has loads of games she can play, and she does so frequently. She loads the machine with the BDs (which don't scratch at all, I hear -- is that true? If not, I'll have her be far more careful, but I've had no issues so far), and plays with ease. She can easily remove the BDs as well, and puts them away in their boxes with care. Obviuously, HDD games require no loading or unloading, so there is no issue here -- she just selects them on the XMB. When playing, she sometimes bounces about a bit, especially when playing games that use the SIXAXIS, or when playing platform games (such as Ratchet and Clank, or the Lego games).

Could she do that safely with a 360? What do you say 360 owners? Is the problem overblown?

To the boy's defense, disc scratching on the 360 is not a rarity. Some recent quotes from just VGChartz members, just the first 20 comments from 20 unique individuals I came across:

1) segajon (08/07/2008): "I put the game in it started to load and bam I heard an akward noise. I opened the disc tray and the game was correctly placed in it so I know it wasn't my fault. The disc now has a wonderful circular scratch all round the disc."

2) kutasek (08/07/2008): "The same thing happen to me with mass effect. It scratched my disc and then I've returned it to my local shop and after getting another copy of the game, it got scratched again by my xbox so i've changed the game for uncharted."

3) bbsin (08/07/2008): "Happened to my MassEffect dvd (360 was horizontal), the sound reminded me of a fax machine. Use a DVD lens cleaner, it should prevent your 360 from scrathing disks again."

4) youjiro (07/6/2008): "... or more accurately i should say my games. Over the last couple of weeks my 360 has turned into a serial killer and started to kill off some of my games. I bought a couple of xboxs games not too long ago and didn't have a chance to play them until recently. first it happend with saints row, a friend came over and wanted to have a go at it, we played for a bit and left it for a couple days. the next time i tried to play it again it didn't go past one of the loading screens, no matter how much I try it it doesn't go past the loading screen. This also happend with kameo a couple of days ago, same problem, doesn't go past any loading screen, and i also tried to load lost odyessy disc 1 and the same problem happend, altough when I load my currect disc 4 it was fine, and all my other games are fine... for now."

6) flagship (07/06/2008): "I've had this same problem with xbox games, Oblivion and Mass Effect. For some reason my 360 loves to scratch up those games while everything else remaind undamaged."

7) Riachu (08/10/2008): "The disks get scratched like that if you move the 360 while the 360 is running and the disk is still in there. That's happen to me twice. First for Guitar Hero II and again for Rock Band"

8) outlawauron (08/11/2008): "Happened to my Gears disc too."

9) elgefe02 (06/19/2008): "My Xbox just scratched my Marvel Ultimate.... I hate that machine... well not really"

10) CaptainPrefrences (03/05/2008): "when i had my xbox 360 last year, it made a circular ring scratch on my gears of war and halo 3 disc. i was so pissed, and in january i sold my 360 and picked up a 40gb ps3. i cant tell you now i can see my face like a mirror in my ps3 cod4 disc."

11) Dianko (03-05-2008):"Assassins Creed completely destroyed. I know the pain of the scratch, furious maiden that she is."

12) WaSuMaRa: (03/05/2008) "Yep it has happened to me, actually 2 out of my 3 games I have have been scratched (But it was because my dog came running in and tumbled down my xbox while I had it in vertical position, and the first time I didnt know and I moved the console and it got scratched)"

13) Astrodust: (03/05/2008) "My first 360 did. I'm onto an elite now with no problems. Knock on wood."

14) Saddle (03/05/2008): "Yes, my previous Xbox360 has. It scratched my Halo3, but Microsoft gave me a new one, when I send my Xbox to repair and they change the DVD-drive. I haven't had problems after that. My brother's 360 just scratched his Devil May Cry 4, and Microsoft isn't gonna compensate it. Now he's trying to get a new one from the store where he bought that...Hope that works."

15) yungmagic09 (03/05/2008): "My madden 07 and oblivion but that's it."

16) __XBrawlX__ (03/05/2008): "^Same here

My friends have had discs that are non readable because their 360 scratched them."

17) coolestguyever (05/11/2008): "I was enjoying a nice gaming session of some GTA4 and what do you know? my 360 starts making a funny sound, then i get a message saying disk is unreadable. I take out the disk and look at it...and its scratched to shit."

18) OT7 (05/11/2008): "Well,if this gives you some consolation,you're not alone in this,a friend's 360 scratch his Dead Rising disk,and another one his Halo 3,the sad thing is all of us live in Mexico and the warranty is a shit in my country,so they had to bought another copies."

19) Dallinor (05/11/2008): "Well that's certainly annoying.

A friend of mine had his Gears Of War CD scratched to pieces, I think he might have tried to move his 360 while he was playing it though."

20) Strategyking92 (05/11/2008): "actually, just yesterday I did the same thing and one of my favorite games (crackdown) got a cirlce around it and now it's unplayable."

Zoiets had ik ook gelezen, was het niet op www.fok.nl , over Kassa? Moet wel zeggen dat die uitzending wel grappig was.

Zoiets had ik ook gelezen, was het niet op www.fok.nl , over Kassa? Moet wel zeggen dat die uitzending wel grappig was.

ugh, he moved the console from horizontal to vertical, of course it's gonna get scratched!

other than that, why did MS make such a mistake with the lense?

To the boy's defense, disc scratching on the 360 is not a rarity. Some recent quotes from just VGChartz members, just the first 20 comments from 20 unique individuals I came across:

1) segajon (08/07/2008): "I put the game in it started to load and bam I heard an akward noise. I opened the disc tray and the game was correctly placed in it so I know it wasn't my fault. The disc now has a wonderful circular scratch all round the disc."

2) kutasek (08/07/2008): "The same thing happen to me with mass effect. It scratched my disc and then I've returned it to my local shop and after getting another copy of the game, it got scratched again by my xbox so i've changed the game for uncharted."

3) bbsin (08/07/2008): "Happened to my MassEffect dvd (360 was horizontal), the sound reminded me of a fax machine. Use a DVD lens cleaner, it should prevent your 360 from scrathing disks again."

4) youjiro (07/6/2008): "... or more accurately i should say my games. Over the last couple of weeks my 360 has turned into a serial killer and started to kill off some of my games. I bought a couple of xboxs games not too long ago and didn't have a chance to play them until recently. first it happend with saints row, a friend came over and wanted to have a go at it, we played for a bit and left it for a couple days. the next time i tried to play it again it didn't go past one of the loading screens, no matter how much I try it it doesn't go past the loading screen. This also happend with kameo a couple of days ago, same problem, doesn't go past any loading screen, and i also tried to load lost odyessy disc 1 and the same problem happend, altough when I load my currect disc 4 it was fine, and all my other games are fine... for now."

6) flagship (07/06/2008): "I've had this same problem with xbox games, Oblivion and Mass Effect. For some reason my 360 loves to scratch up those games while everything else remaind undamaged."

7) Riachu (08/10/2008): "The disks get scratched like that if you move the 360 while the 360 is running and the disk is still in there. That's happen to me twice. First for Guitar Hero II and again for Rock Band"

8) outlawauron (08/11/2008): "Happened to my Gears disc too."

9) elgefe02 (06/19/2008): "My Xbox just scratched my Marvel Ultimate.... I hate that machine... well not really"

10) CaptainPrefrences (03/05/2008): "when i had my xbox 360 last year, it made a circular ring scratch on my gears of war and halo 3 disc. i was so pissed, and in january i sold my 360 and picked up a 40gb ps3. i cant tell you now i can see my face like a mirror in my ps3 cod4 disc."

11) Dianko (03-05-2008):"Assassins Creed completely destroyed. I know the pain of the scratch, furious maiden that she is."

12) WaSuMaRa: (03/05/2008) "Yep it has happened to me, actually 2 out of my 3 games I have have been scratched (But it was because my dog came running in and tumbled down my xbox while I had it in vertical position, and the first time I didnt know and I moved the console and it got scratched)"

13) Astrodust: (03/05/2008) "My first 360 did. I'm onto an elite now with no problems. Knock on wood."

14) Saddle (03/05/2008): "Yes, my previous Xbox360 has. It scratched my Halo3, but Microsoft gave me a new one, when I send my Xbox to repair and they change the DVD-drive. I haven't had problems after that. My brother's 360 just scratched his Devil May Cry 4, and Microsoft isn't gonna compensate it. Now he's trying to get a new one from the store where he bought that...Hope that works."

15) yungmagic09 (03/05/2008): "My madden 07 and oblivion but that's it."

16) __XBrawlX__ (03/05/2008): "^Same here

My friends have had discs that are non readable because their 360 scratched them."

17) coolestguyever (05/11/2008): "I was enjoying a nice gaming session of some GTA4 and what do you know? my 360 starts making a funny sound, then i get a message saying disk is unreadable. I take out the disk and look at it...and its scratched to shit."

18) OT7 (05/11/2008): "Well,if this gives you some consolation,you're not alone in this,a friend's 360 scratch his Dead Rising disk,and another one his Halo 3,the sad thing is all of us live in Mexico and the warranty is a shit in my country,so they had to bought another copies."

19) Dallinor (05/11/2008): "Well that's certainly annoying.

A friend of mine had his Gears Of War CD scratched to pieces, I think he might have tried to move his 360 while he was playing it though."

20) Strategyking92 (05/11/2008): "actually, just yesterday I did the same thing and one of my favorite games (crackdown) got a cirlce around it and now it's unplayable."