Tech Shout!

Xbox 360 maker Microsoft has been dragged to court in a class-action suit following allegations that the next-gen console unit damages gaming media (videogame CDs).

The lawsuit that was filed in the U.S. District court for the Southern District of Florida by Florida-based Jorge Brouwer, claims that the Xbox 360 ends up making the videogame CDs unusable thanks to the scratches.

And it doesn’t end there. The lawsuit further states that thousands of Xbox 360 owners have been affected by and have put forward their complaints to Microsoft about the problem.

The lawsuit further states that the disc scratching problem in the Xbox 360 is not limited to the U.S. alone. It goes ahead and quotes an instance of a television program broadcasted in the Netherlands that reviewed the complaints of the Xbox 360 users and even included lab tests, which resulted in disc scratching by some of Microsoft next-gen consoles.

Microsoft further retorts back to the accusations by stating that the company has a global replacement program for games that they create. If there is any dissatisfied Xbox 360 owner, who has a damaged disc, then the owner can send the damaged disc along with USD 20 to Microsoft. And the Redmond, Washington, USA-based company would deliver a replacement disc in return

In addition, Brouwer is demanding over $5 million from Microsoft, along with repair of the Xbox 360 consoles that cause the scratching and replacement of damaged discs.

Further on, Microsoft on its part too plans to check and repair consoles that consumers believe may have scratched discs.

Microsoft certainly isn’t having the best of its times right now. Just a few days back we had reported that Microsoft had extended the warranty of the Xbox 360 gaming device and was mostly going to take a US$1 billion earnings charge to fix hardware problems in the consoles and now there’s yet another problem that’s come up.