Gadget-Arena.com

According to a development source, the new Xbox Dashbaorrd Update that is about to go into open testing to Xbox Live users, game discs will be gaining 1GB in game storage. Current XBox 360 game discs allow for 6.8GB out of the maximum 7.95GB of standard dual layer DVDs for game content. The rest has been reserved for anti-piracy sectors ad DVD-video content. This means that even the PlayStation 2 had more disc space reserved for games for developers to work with. This also more than likely means that the DVD-video space has either greatly been stripped or completely removed in order to allow for that much extra space.

Beta testers of the new dashboard update will be receiving a copy of Halo: Reach which is assumed to be in the new disc format in order to test it out. Since there is no one standard disc drive for the XBox 360, they will be looking for many users of each type they have used in the creation of their console to get an accurate picture of just how well the new disc type will perform and what they need to change, if anything.

Halo: Reach took up 6.6GB on its original release. It remains to be seen if they will add more content, or just move that content into sectors that was previously reserved for the DVD-video content, or a little of both.While many developers will welcome the additional space, they might also have to factor in slower load times, as this reserved space is most likely closer to the center of the disc, where read times are significantly slower than on the outside of the disc. Where developers put certain content might also make a huge difference on how well games perform under this new disc format that will go enter into the wild very soon.