Developers have been quoted as saying they prefer the XBox 360 hard drive for faster read access during a game. So they may use the PS3 drive for some storage but not too much or the game will run too slow. MS has also told developers they can start using the hard drive (used to be a no-no when the XBox360 first came out) as long as they provide a sticker on the game. I don't see that as a problem since nobody has the basic no drive console anymore but those memory sticks can still be used for all the consoles anyway.
These are both pretty sophisticated machines. I'm sure the PS3 developers can load whatever they must to the HDD while the game is playing so that it is available instantly when needed. To be able to do this with one very large disk in the machine, rather than having two or three DVD's for the same amount of video's scenery, etc, is a major advantage.
Also, the base 360's drive is only 20 GB. Not much can be held on that in a permanent way. The Base Sony has a 40 GB drive, a bit better, and with the BR drive, it doesn't need to have data downloaded to the drive before the game starts for some time, if the game is bigger than one DVD.
This might be a little off topic...but there was a story in the Sydney Morning Herald recently about XBox360 damaging discs...I wouldn't even touch an XBox360 with a 10-foot pole after reading this...I don't care which one is easier to develop for!
Xbox not up to scratch, say gamers
Louisa Hearn
February 19, 2008
Kelly Parkinson thought he had found the perfect gift when he splashed out more than $600 on a brand new Xbox 360 for his son's 15th birthday last year.
Six months down the track, Mr Parkinson claims the machine has destroyed $200 worth of games bought from his son's own pocket money and is now effectively defunct.
Hardware problems with early models of the Xbox 360 have proved a high-profile thorn in Microsoft's ambitions to dominate the console market. The worst and most widespread of these - the infamous "red ring of death" (RROD) - moved the company to extend its 12-month warranty to three years last June.
But reports of other hardware problems such as faulty disc drives and scratched game discs not covered in the extended warranty, have also persisted - although Microsoft has never acknowledged these as flaws.
Mr Parkinson's trouble began in November when his son was playing American football game Madden NFL 2007. The game suddenly displayed an error message and, when his son removed it from the drive, it had a large circular scratch on it.
"It was a very clear mechanical circle," Mr Parkinson said.
The machine was sent under warranty to Microsoft for repairs but a month after it was returned, the very same thing happened - this time leaving a deep scratch in basketball game NBS 2K8.
Mr Parkinson said that Microsoft's position on scratched games was that they were caused by mishandling the console, but he maintained his son's Xbox 360 had never left its shelf.
"When I called Microsoft about the problem, in every third sentence they would ask: 'Did you move the Xbox?' Even though they won't admit there is a problem, they keep offering a repair."
Mr Parkinson said that, under Victorian law, he believed he was entitled to a refund for faulty goods - and said his complaint had been accepted by Consumer Affairs Victoria.
"I feel like we can't play games or do anything with it without being at risk each time of losing a $100 game that the company will not reimburse. The Xbox 360 is not fit for the purpose it was intended for - it scratches games, making them unplayable, even after repair."
Although Microsoft was unable to discuss exact details of its policies regarding scratched discs, it says it takes all customer concerns very seriously and suggests any users experiencing hardware problems contact its help desk. "We believe it is important to work with our customers to resolve any issues they are experiencing," the company wrote in an email statement.
Electronic Warranty company Square Trade last week issued a report on the number of service calls it had recorded for the Xbox 360, revealing a 16.4 per cent normal-use failure rate - well in excess of the 3-5 per cent failure rate Microsoft announced a year ago.
Although 60 per cent of service calls were RROD problems, it says that disc read errors accounted for nearly half of the remaining claims. "Other problems we see crop up fairly often are fried video cards, hardware freezes, on/off failures and, interestingly, disc tray malfunctions that also tend to damage game discs," it said.
However Microsoft has dismissed the report, saying that, based on its own community's feedback, the methodology of the report was "suspect".
Microsoft's own terms and conditions state that Xbox 360 users experiencing non-RROD problems out of the 12-month warranty period must pay a fee each time their machine is sent off for repairs. But this has proved too expensive for Paul Frew, the owner of two defunct Xbox 360s with malfunctioning disc drives.
"I've already wasted $1400 on two Xboxes, but I still have my original PS2 which is turning eight years old," he said.
Mr Frew has chosen not to shell out the $132 fee for fixing each of his Xbox 360s, given the company can provide no guarantee that the faults will not crop up again.
Instead he has opted to rent a new Xbox 360 so that he is not liable for any future servicing costs.
"A customer service representative told me that 'apparently' Microsoft is looking at extending the three-year warranty to other issues and if it does get approved for disk problems then I will be refunded my $132," he said. But as the representative could not give a time frame on the decision he had decided not to proceed.
In a survey of its members this week, Mojo, an Australian Xbox community of about 100 gamers aged 25 and above, asked how many times they had had their Xbox 360s replaced or repaired.
Out of the 37 respondents, 16 (43%) said they sent their Xbox 360 in for repairs once, six (16%) said they had sent it in twice and seven (18%) claimed to have clocked up three repairs. Another three (8%) members had sent their box in for repairs more than four times while five (13%) members reported no problems at all.
A community member, with the gamer-tag Jugadero, said: "As far as loyal customers go, you'd be hard pressed to find more ardent supporters of Microsoft's console and related products. However, we're not so one-eyed that we don't know when we've been dealt with shabbily, and it's time someone took Microsoft to task."
^ Ouch. The 360 has a few really nice games on it, but Microsoft sure isn't making any friends with these kind of huge and pervasive reliability problems.
You also have to wonder how much money MS will really clear in this console generation, after they've paid off all the warranty repair costs. This is on top of losing $6 billion or so on the Xbox 1.
With them about to spend $50 billion on acquiring Yahoo, do they really want to remain in a business that's been cash negative for them overall?
The damaged discs are happening for two reasons: 1) being that people are stupid enough to move around their Xbox with a disc inside and 2) because people are running their Xbox360 on it's side vertically instead of horizontally. The latter being because Microsoft is stupid enoough to encourage it and a lot of buyers are stupid enough not to consider why this may not be a good idea.
A community member, with the gamer-tag Jugadero, said: "As far as loyal customers go, you'd be hard pressed to find more ardent supporters of Microsoft's console and related products. However, we're not so one-eyed that we don't know when we've been dealt with shabbily, and it's time someone took Microsoft to task."
I don't think they are Microsoft supporters as much as Xbox 360 addicts.
Buy them from Best Buy and get their warranty in case you have any problems. I never had any but if I do all I'll have to do is drive to the Best Buy next to my house and get a new replacement. None of this shippping to Microsoft business for me.
Also, Best Buy sells game disk insurance for games from all consoles. It's a good buy for people who carry their games all over the place and tend to scratch them. It's just like $4 at the time of purchase. If your disc gets scratched they give you a new one. I love buying my toys at Best Buy because of their lenient warranty plans.
This will have little impact on Xbox 360 since the HD-DVD player is an accessory rather than being built-in. Expect Microsoft to quietly make a new Blu-Ray accessory in the no-to-distant future.
The madness is why M$ made it an accessory and never a standard. Rather than sit on the fence though like apple they gave customers an option that was the most cost effective to them. BR licensing is horrible.
Who really cares though who won. It's not like the hddvd drive set anyone back more than $200. And its not like your movies will stop working, no investments lost really. So you have to buy a BR drive, probably would have to get one anyway, even it was still split.
This might be a little off topic...but there was a story in the Sydney Morning Herald recently about XBox360 damaging discs...I wouldn't even touch an XBox360 with a 10-foot pole after reading this...I don't care which one is easier to develop for!
This is NOT new. The story about the 360 scratching disks goes back to the very beginning of the launch.
It has also been said that DVD playback quality is very poor. I don't know if that problem was fixed, though the scratching was supposedly fixed, but maybe some have slipped through even now.
This is NOT new. The story about the 360 scratching disks goes back to the very beginning of the launch.
It has also been said that DVD playback quality is very poor. I don't know if that problem was fixed, though the scratching was supposedly fixed, but maybe some have slipped through even now.
All in all, the 360 is a crock.
DVD playback is fine, at least I think it is indistinguishable from PS3 dvd playback, but I run them both through a $2500 video scaler. I have my 360 vertical, and no scratched disks but I also don't move it while there is a disk in the drive (or at all, in fact).
A lot of people had scratched disks in the beginning, but we have learned not to move the unit while playing and so a behavior change fixed it. No behavior change fixes the red ring of death, though.
The madness is why M$ made it an accessory and never a standard. Rather than sit on the fence though like apple they gave customers an option that was the most cost effective to them. BR licensing is horrible.
Microsoft didn't want to include HD-DVD on every console because it would've made the 360 considerably more expensive. They felt they needed every advantage vs the PS3, including price. And in worked, in the short-term. In the long-term, though, it's a negative.
MS denied the 360 the ability to use higher-capacity disks, which will affect what can be done with some kinds of games. And, of course, there's some very unhappy owners of 360 HD-DVD add-ons out there right now.
I'm sure MS will rush to get a Blu-Ray add-on out for the 360, but the combined cost of a 360 plus the BR add-on will very likely be more than an equivalent PS3. Plus MS now looks like a follower.
There's probably not much joy in Redmond tonight... \
The damaged discs are happening for two reasons: 1) being that people are stupid enough to move around their Xbox with a disc inside and 2) because people are running their Xbox360 on it's side vertically instead of horizontally.
The latter being because Microsoft is stupid enoough to encourage it and a lot of buyers are stupid enough not to consider why this may not be a good idea.
Another part of it may be that a lot of ppl ran their PS2s vertically with no problems, so they think its okay to do it with the 360 too.
Another part of it may be that a lot of ppl ran their PS2s vertically with no problems, so they think its okay to do it with the 360 too.
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Vertical 360 use is fine, no scratches. It even has feet on the end to encourage you to place it vertically or horizontally. It is supposed to work that way, unless maybe people are putting it upside down?
Why was mdotdubz banned? I didn't read anything from him that would warrant a banning.
I dunno, lol... apparently i called someone a name. I think it was idiot or something. reminds me of third grade.
yeah, i guess i was a bit hostile about the ps3 and bluray. i wish them no harm, but non-techy people have no idea what it is. DVD on the other hand, i remember, was being whispered by people who barely know anything beyond turning a TV on and off.
Some of us forget that most of the world's population is not technical and the simplest or oldest concepts to us are foreign or completely unknown to them.
It appears to me that Bluray has been around for a while without picking up enough steam with the general public. It might be more widely accepted, but I don't see the impact of BD being as large as DVD. People are reluctant to let DVD go because they don't understand the benefits of BD.
I myself see it as a waste to adopt now and am pretty content with DVDs & their quality, and dare I say that I recently even moved beyond the DVD to renting films on iTunes and playing them off my iPhone. I love it because its like a portable DVD player that fits in my pocket and I can hook up to any Big Screen DVD with just a simple cable. So far, nobody has complained about the quality of the iPhone on TV (nobody has even noticed) and most are impressed i'm running movies of my phone onto the big screen!
Well, in any case, I'm back, so you can light the torches and whip the pitchforks out!
I dunno, lol... apparently i called someone a name. I think it was idiot or something. reminds me of third grade.
Well, there seemed to be a pretty consistent flow of "idiot" and "loser" comments coming from you. Not horrible, as Internet manners go, but here at AI that kind of behavior will get you shot down by the mods pretty quickly.
Quote:
yeah, i guess i was a bit hostile about the ps3 and bluray. i wish them no harm, but non-techy people have no idea what it is.
The majority of ppl at AI are reasonably technical, actually. They just did not seem to agree with you, for the most part.
Vertical 360 use is fine, no scratches. It even has feet on the end to encourage you to place it vertically or horizontally. It is supposed to work that way, unless maybe people are putting it upside down?
I don't think it's the position but when you tilt from one to the other while the disc is spinning is the problem. That seems kind of bizarre to me, I've never thought to rotate a game system while it's in use.
I don't think it's the position but when you tilt from one to the other while the disc is spinning is the problem. That seems kind of bizarre to me, I've never thought to rotate a game system while it's in use.
The damaged discs are happening for two reasons: 1) being that people are stupid enough to move around their Xbox with a disc inside and 2) because people are running their Xbox360 on it's side vertically instead of horizontally. The latter being because Microsoft is stupid enoough to encourage it and a lot of buyers are stupid enough not to consider why this may not be a good idea.
The moving it around, no! Not the problem. People have reported that they are not doing that, and I believe it. No reason to think that people are holding their machines while using them.
Playing it on the side is fine.
The iMacs have their DVD recorders mounted that way as well. No reports of scratched disks.
In fact, many players are designated as being fine with sideways play.
DVD playback is fine, at least I think it is indistinguishable from PS3 dvd playback, but I run them both through a $2500 video scaler. I have my 360 vertical, and no scratched disks but I also don't move it while there is a disk in the drive (or at all, in fact).
A lot of people had scratched disks in the beginning, but we have learned not to move the unit while playing and so a behavior change fixed it. No behavior change fixes the red ring of death, though.
This has been widely reported. As I said, it may have been fixed, I'm not sure.
Comments
Developers have been quoted as saying they prefer the XBox 360 hard drive for faster read access during a game. So they may use the PS3 drive for some storage but not too much or the game will run too slow. MS has also told developers they can start using the hard drive (used to be a no-no when the XBox360 first came out) as long as they provide a sticker on the game. I don't see that as a problem since nobody has the basic no drive console anymore but those memory sticks can still be used for all the consoles anyway.
These are both pretty sophisticated machines. I'm sure the PS3 developers can load whatever they must to the HDD while the game is playing so that it is available instantly when needed. To be able to do this with one very large disk in the machine, rather than having two or three DVD's for the same amount of video's scenery, etc, is a major advantage.
Also, the base 360's drive is only 20 GB. Not much can be held on that in a permanent way. The Base Sony has a 40 GB drive, a bit better, and with the BR drive, it doesn't need to have data downloaded to the drive before the game starts for some time, if the game is bigger than one DVD.
Xbox not up to scratch, say gamers
Louisa Hearn
February 19, 2008
Kelly Parkinson thought he had found the perfect gift when he splashed out more than $600 on a brand new Xbox 360 for his son's 15th birthday last year.
Six months down the track, Mr Parkinson claims the machine has destroyed $200 worth of games bought from his son's own pocket money and is now effectively defunct.
Hardware problems with early models of the Xbox 360 have proved a high-profile thorn in Microsoft's ambitions to dominate the console market. The worst and most widespread of these - the infamous "red ring of death" (RROD) - moved the company to extend its 12-month warranty to three years last June.
But reports of other hardware problems such as faulty disc drives and scratched game discs not covered in the extended warranty, have also persisted - although Microsoft has never acknowledged these as flaws.
Mr Parkinson's trouble began in November when his son was playing American football game Madden NFL 2007. The game suddenly displayed an error message and, when his son removed it from the drive, it had a large circular scratch on it.
"It was a very clear mechanical circle," Mr Parkinson said.
The machine was sent under warranty to Microsoft for repairs but a month after it was returned, the very same thing happened - this time leaving a deep scratch in basketball game NBS 2K8.
Mr Parkinson said that Microsoft's position on scratched games was that they were caused by mishandling the console, but he maintained his son's Xbox 360 had never left its shelf.
"When I called Microsoft about the problem, in every third sentence they would ask: 'Did you move the Xbox?' Even though they won't admit there is a problem, they keep offering a repair."
Mr Parkinson said that, under Victorian law, he believed he was entitled to a refund for faulty goods - and said his complaint had been accepted by Consumer Affairs Victoria.
"I feel like we can't play games or do anything with it without being at risk each time of losing a $100 game that the company will not reimburse. The Xbox 360 is not fit for the purpose it was intended for - it scratches games, making them unplayable, even after repair."
Although Microsoft was unable to discuss exact details of its policies regarding scratched discs, it says it takes all customer concerns very seriously and suggests any users experiencing hardware problems contact its help desk. "We believe it is important to work with our customers to resolve any issues they are experiencing," the company wrote in an email statement.
Electronic Warranty company Square Trade last week issued a report on the number of service calls it had recorded for the Xbox 360, revealing a 16.4 per cent normal-use failure rate - well in excess of the 3-5 per cent failure rate Microsoft announced a year ago.
Although 60 per cent of service calls were RROD problems, it says that disc read errors accounted for nearly half of the remaining claims. "Other problems we see crop up fairly often are fried video cards, hardware freezes, on/off failures and, interestingly, disc tray malfunctions that also tend to damage game discs," it said.
However Microsoft has dismissed the report, saying that, based on its own community's feedback, the methodology of the report was "suspect".
Microsoft's own terms and conditions state that Xbox 360 users experiencing non-RROD problems out of the 12-month warranty period must pay a fee each time their machine is sent off for repairs. But this has proved too expensive for Paul Frew, the owner of two defunct Xbox 360s with malfunctioning disc drives.
"I've already wasted $1400 on two Xboxes, but I still have my original PS2 which is turning eight years old," he said.
Mr Frew has chosen not to shell out the $132 fee for fixing each of his Xbox 360s, given the company can provide no guarantee that the faults will not crop up again.
Instead he has opted to rent a new Xbox 360 so that he is not liable for any future servicing costs.
"A customer service representative told me that 'apparently' Microsoft is looking at extending the three-year warranty to other issues and if it does get approved for disk problems then I will be refunded my $132," he said. But as the representative could not give a time frame on the decision he had decided not to proceed.
In a survey of its members this week, Mojo, an Australian Xbox community of about 100 gamers aged 25 and above, asked how many times they had had their Xbox 360s replaced or repaired.
Out of the 37 respondents, 16 (43%) said they sent their Xbox 360 in for repairs once, six (16%) said they had sent it in twice and seven (18%) claimed to have clocked up three repairs. Another three (8%) members had sent their box in for repairs more than four times while five (13%) members reported no problems at all.
A community member, with the gamer-tag Jugadero, said: "As far as loyal customers go, you'd be hard pressed to find more ardent supporters of Microsoft's console and related products. However, we're not so one-eyed that we don't know when we've been dealt with shabbily, and it's time someone took Microsoft to task."
You also have to wonder how much money MS will really clear in this console generation, after they've paid off all the warranty repair costs. This is on top of losing $6 billion or so on the Xbox 1.
With them about to spend $50 billion on acquiring Yahoo, do they really want to remain in a business that's been cash negative for them overall?
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A community member, with the gamer-tag Jugadero, said: "As far as loyal customers go, you'd be hard pressed to find more ardent supporters of Microsoft's console and related products. However, we're not so one-eyed that we don't know when we've been dealt with shabbily, and it's time someone took Microsoft to task."
I don't think they are Microsoft supporters as much as Xbox 360 addicts.
Buy them from Best Buy and get their warranty in case you have any problems. I never had any but if I do all I'll have to do is drive to the Best Buy next to my house and get a new replacement. None of this shippping to Microsoft business for me.
Also, Best Buy sells game disk insurance for games from all consoles. It's a good buy for people who carry their games all over the place and tend to scratch them. It's just like $4 at the time of purchase. If your disc gets scratched they give you a new one. I love buying my toys at Best Buy because of their lenient warranty plans.
Actually, I saw a ton of TV commercials for GoW. Loved the song they used too... 'Mad World' by Gary Jules.
Yeah but nobody knew how good the game would be. I remember those commercials and they never made me think about buying the game. Funny.
I heard CoD4 actually outsold Halo 3. That's impressive.
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COD4 kicked Halo3's butt to the moon! It was voted Game Of The Year by the Xbox Live users too. It beat Halo 3 there in many categories.
This will have little impact on Xbox 360 since the HD-DVD player is an accessory rather than being built-in. Expect Microsoft to quietly make a new Blu-Ray accessory in the no-to-distant future.
The madness is why M$ made it an accessory and never a standard. Rather than sit on the fence though like apple they gave customers an option that was the most cost effective to them. BR licensing is horrible.
Who really cares though who won. It's not like the hddvd drive set anyone back more than $200. And its not like your movies will stop working, no investments lost really. So you have to buy a BR drive, probably would have to get one anyway, even it was still split.
This might be a little off topic...but there was a story in the Sydney Morning Herald recently about XBox360 damaging discs...I wouldn't even touch an XBox360 with a 10-foot pole after reading this...I don't care which one is easier to develop for!
This is NOT new. The story about the 360 scratching disks goes back to the very beginning of the launch.
It has also been said that DVD playback quality is very poor. I don't know if that problem was fixed, though the scratching was supposedly fixed, but maybe some have slipped through even now.
All in all, the 360 is a crock.
This is NOT new. The story about the 360 scratching disks goes back to the very beginning of the launch.
It has also been said that DVD playback quality is very poor. I don't know if that problem was fixed, though the scratching was supposedly fixed, but maybe some have slipped through even now.
All in all, the 360 is a crock.
DVD playback is fine, at least I think it is indistinguishable from PS3 dvd playback, but I run them both through a $2500 video scaler. I have my 360 vertical, and no scratched disks but I also don't move it while there is a disk in the drive (or at all, in fact).
A lot of people had scratched disks in the beginning, but we have learned not to move the unit while playing and so a behavior change fixed it. No behavior change fixes the red ring of death, though.
The madness is why M$ made it an accessory and never a standard. Rather than sit on the fence though like apple they gave customers an option that was the most cost effective to them. BR licensing is horrible.
Microsoft didn't want to include HD-DVD on every console because it would've made the 360 considerably more expensive. They felt they needed every advantage vs the PS3, including price. And in worked, in the short-term. In the long-term, though, it's a negative.
MS denied the 360 the ability to use higher-capacity disks, which will affect what can be done with some kinds of games. And, of course, there's some very unhappy owners of 360 HD-DVD add-ons out there right now.
I'm sure MS will rush to get a Blu-Ray add-on out for the 360, but the combined cost of a 360 plus the BR add-on will very likely be more than an equivalent PS3. Plus MS now looks like a follower.
There's probably not much joy in Redmond tonight...
.
The damaged discs are happening for two reasons: 1) being that people are stupid enough to move around their Xbox with a disc inside and 2) because people are running their Xbox360 on it's side vertically instead of horizontally.
The latter being because Microsoft is stupid enoough to encourage it and a lot of buyers are stupid enough not to consider why this may not be a good idea.
Another part of it may be that a lot of ppl ran their PS2s vertically with no problems, so they think its okay to do it with the 360 too.
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Another part of it may be that a lot of ppl ran their PS2s vertically with no problems, so they think its okay to do it with the 360 too.
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Vertical 360 use is fine, no scratches. It even has feet on the end to encourage you to place it vertically or horizontally. It is supposed to work that way, unless maybe people are putting it upside down?
Why was mdotdubz banned? I didn't read anything from him that would warrant a banning.
I dunno, lol... apparently i called someone a name. I think it was idiot or something. reminds me of third grade.
yeah, i guess i was a bit hostile about the ps3 and bluray. i wish them no harm, but non-techy people have no idea what it is. DVD on the other hand, i remember, was being whispered by people who barely know anything beyond turning a TV on and off.
Some of us forget that most of the world's population is not technical and the simplest or oldest concepts to us are foreign or completely unknown to them.
It appears to me that Bluray has been around for a while without picking up enough steam with the general public. It might be more widely accepted, but I don't see the impact of BD being as large as DVD. People are reluctant to let DVD go because they don't understand the benefits of BD.
I myself see it as a waste to adopt now and am pretty content with DVDs & their quality, and dare I say that I recently even moved beyond the DVD to renting films on iTunes and playing them off my iPhone. I love it because its like a portable DVD player that fits in my pocket and I can hook up to any Big Screen DVD with just a simple cable. So far, nobody has complained about the quality of the iPhone on TV (nobody has even noticed) and most are impressed i'm running movies of my phone onto the big screen!
Well, in any case, I'm back, so you can light the torches and whip the pitchforks out!
Vertical 360 use is fine, no scratches.
4metta disagrees. Perhaps you two should compare notes and get to the bottom of this?
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I dunno, lol... apparently i called someone a name. I think it was idiot or something. reminds me of third grade.
Well, there seemed to be a pretty consistent flow of "idiot" and "loser" comments coming from you. Not horrible, as Internet manners go, but here at AI that kind of behavior will get you shot down by the mods pretty quickly.
yeah, i guess i was a bit hostile about the ps3 and bluray. i wish them no harm, but non-techy people have no idea what it is.
The majority of ppl at AI are reasonably technical, actually. They just did not seem to agree with you, for the most part.
.
Vertical 360 use is fine, no scratches. It even has feet on the end to encourage you to place it vertically or horizontally. It is supposed to work that way, unless maybe people are putting it upside down?
I don't think it's the position but when you tilt from one to the other while the disc is spinning is the problem. That seems kind of bizarre to me, I've never thought to rotate a game system while it's in use.
I don't think it's the position but when you tilt from one to the other while the disc is spinning is the problem. That seems kind of bizarre to me, I've never thought to rotate a game system while it's in use.
eeek! I wouldn't do that.
eeek! I wouldn't do that.
Eeek indeed.
The damaged discs are happening for two reasons: 1) being that people are stupid enough to move around their Xbox with a disc inside and 2) because people are running their Xbox360 on it's side vertically instead of horizontally. The latter being because Microsoft is stupid enoough to encourage it and a lot of buyers are stupid enough not to consider why this may not be a good idea.
The moving it around, no! Not the problem. People have reported that they are not doing that, and I believe it. No reason to think that people are holding their machines while using them.
Playing it on the side is fine.
The iMacs have their DVD recorders mounted that way as well. No reports of scratched disks.
In fact, many players are designated as being fine with sideways play.
DVD playback is fine, at least I think it is indistinguishable from PS3 dvd playback, but I run them both through a $2500 video scaler. I have my 360 vertical, and no scratched disks but I also don't move it while there is a disk in the drive (or at all, in fact).
A lot of people had scratched disks in the beginning, but we have learned not to move the unit while playing and so a behavior change fixed it. No behavior change fixes the red ring of death, though.
This has been widely reported. As I said, it may have been fixed, I'm not sure.