http://kotaku.com/gaming/defective/halo-3-disc-read-errors-rampant-304600.php

A storm is brewing in both the Xbox and Bungie forums, where over a hundred posters have now verified that their copies of Halo 3 are causing disc read errors. lockups, and even the dreaded RRoD on their Xbox 360 consoles. From what I can glean from skimming through the 22 pages of replies to the original poster's problem, most of the people affected purchased the standard edition, though a few are reporting having the problem on both the standard and the LE version of the game. Some believe the discs are corrupting the data on the hard disc itself, as some have had their game discs replaced twice or more now with similar results, and removing the hard disc seems to keep the error from occurring with some posters. Some can load the game fine and play it for short bursts before the problem occurs, while others are finding the issue limited to certain game modes. Check out the forum threads for more info on the problems had, and hopefully some official response will be given about the issue soon.

I post this partly because it seems to be a major issue, and partly because: it just happened to my friend. Yes I was going to get to play Halo 3 today for the first time. I got over there, we popped it in, started our first match and... zap. No more Halo 3. I wasn't sure what was going on. He figured it was just a problem with the disc and is taking his back to EB Games to get a replacement copy tomorrow, but apparently this isn't a localized issue. Of course this comes right on the tail end of the discovery that many LE discs are scratched. Halo 3's launch isn't going very smoothly. It's most likely just a problem with one of the printers rather than the software itself, but hopefully Microsoft deals with it soon.

Roughly 1,200,000 copies of Halo 3 (which is probably on the low side by now).
Roughly 100 people have the problem. Lets be generous and pretend that there's double that number that haven't reported the problem so lets say 300.

That's 0.025% of owners that have disc read errors. That is not rampant, that's just a small problem that people are trying to blow out of proportion. This can be fixed by just walking into Target, Best Buy, whatever and replacing your disk. The corrupting the hard drive thing is purely speculation and I would wait to start believing that one.

I copied the Kotaku article and title. That's not being generous. That's actually very unrealistic. Most people like my friend would just assume they had a single bad disc. I don't think it's more than say 5%, but it's enough that you can bet the class action lawsuit is already being written. Not that it will succede but it's still a problem and it needs to be addressed.

ive heard no news of this anywhere, im with twestern for once on something

0 problems, heck i even played my 360 for 9 hours straight yesterday, didnt even overheat, seems i get to have one of the few "good" products according to some people.

I doubt it has anything to do with the hardware. I'd say it's more likely a mistake by one of the printers. In other words it's most likely not even Microsoft's fault.

Btw, it's not just 100 anymore... since the Kotaku article and people realized it was not a localized issue there have been hundreds more replies both here: http://forums.xbox.com/1/15792880/ShowPost.aspx#15792880

and here: http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=13193500&postRepeater1-p=1 

Even if it were say 10,000 discs were corrupted that's still less 1%. I don't deny that this is a problem that a simple exchanging the disc won't fix, I just think rampant is the wrong word.

Double of 100 is 200, not 300

Edit: NVM, just read it a bit more thoroughly lol.

Well okay I guess I agree rampant probably isn't correct, but again I was just copying the Kotaku title.  I also agree a disc exchange would work fine.  Again, it's probably simply an issue with one of the printers.  If it was an issue with the base software everyone would have had the problem by now.  Still, they need to hurry up and respond because people are getting worried and again class action lawsuits have been filed for less.

Meh. Defective disks will be exchanged at Microsoft's expense.

The disc manufacturer will be punished/force into tighter quality control.

No one will care by Christmas.

...I mean

360 IS DOOOMEEEDD!!!!!eleven

As a general rule, with product failures like this a large portion of the people will assume that it was a localized problem and a large portion of the remaing people will assume that they are the cause of the problem. Now, at this point in time, I would still say that this is probably pretty localized and not representative of a larger problem but it is possible that this may be the first signs of a deeper problem.