Scratched: Halo 3 Special Edition Discs
You know, I almost saw this coming last week when I got my Halo 3 press kit housed in the same boxes they used to ship the special editions. In case you're sitting on a regular edition ($60), which doesn't seem to have the problem, the special edition boxes are the same, length by width, but roughly as thick as three stacked regular editions. They open on the front and back and, on either of the doors you swing outward, have two of the little circular nubs dead center to hold the discs.
Most time, those nubs are either rubbery or have the little tabs that flex to hook around the disc ring and keep it pretty snug. (I'm pretty sure the regular edition employs the latter.) But in the $70 Limited and $130 Legendary (see update below) editions that nub is simply a hard piece of plastic shaped like a blunt-points triangle. Plastic on plastic when you snap the disc on, in other words, with no additional hooks or grips of any sort.
So when I opened the press kit, both discs were (surprise!) floating (rattling, clattering) free, having come unattached who knows when during shipping. Same for my Limited Edition review copy when it showed up the following week. Discs floating free in metal casing with a hard plastic nob protruding from the data side? Get your Brasso ready, stat.
To be fair, if GamePro hadn't broken the story, I would never have checked or frankly noticed a thing. My discs played fine, never locked, never made my 360 pause or hitch when loading or streaming data, and as far as I'm concerned, are perfectly playable long term. Of course if you do a lot of trade swaps with your local game retailer, this might get you into trouble when they pop the case, flip up the disc, and realize it looks like you left it sitting data-side-up on the floor of a chicken pen overnight.
It's hard to see here because of the flash and high reflectivity of the discs (and my amateurishness with cameras and lighting), but both the game and media kit discs look pretty horrible to the naked eye, with most of the scratching occurring around the center (less so around the exterior edges). It's bad enough, in fact, that I'm kind of surprised they read at all.
Update - Via Gamasutra, the issue only affects Limited edition discs, the Legendary edition uses different apparently unaffected packaging, and Microsoft is officially offering to replace Limited edition scratched discs for free through 12/31/07 only via this page.
Microsoft Responds - We have identified that there are some instances of blemishes on discs as a result of the packaging of the Halo 3 Limited Edition. It is related only to the Halo 3 Limited Edition version of the game. This is a small fraction of the total number of Halo 3 games shipped and sold, and is a limited production version of the game. We are currently investigating the scope of this situation and notwithstanding the outcome of the investigation, we have implemented a plan to address it. We encourage anyone experiencing these issues to go to xbox.com/support and click on the Halo 3 Limited Edition disc replacement link. We will be replacing these discs and apologize for the inconvenience.
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The Legendary edition is not effected by this issue as the disks are housed in a standard game package, not the special one that the Limited edition comes in.