Differences between Xbox OG silvers/confidential discs

[kennypecheur]

Hi all,

Recently, I have been able to get a bunch of Xbox Original review / preview discs from a former video game magazine employee.

In the lot, there is many different kind of discs : Microsoft confidential, Other kind of Pressed discs, Burned discs,....

I was able to play some of them on a retail xbox, but some of them are only playable on a xbox debug unit.

The burned ones can obviously not be played on a standard xbox, but I try to understand why some pressed discs can be played on a retail unit and other not.

For example, the three discs bellow seems to be the same kind of pressed discs. I have been able to play the discs on the first picture but not the one on the second picture.





Does anybody knows if there are some specific rules regarding which disc can or can not be played on a retail unit ?

When putting the Ninja Gaiden disc on a retail system, I got the message below :



Sorry if my questions can sound stupid but I am really not familiar with these discs.

 

[Deleted member 2631]

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[Dink]

From what I understand, the Microsoft Confidential discs are pressed like retail discs and are signed by Microsoft themselves which explains why they can run on retail hardware. While the other burned / pressed discs were made by the developers and still have the test certificates which means they can only run on dev hardware (or maybe even a modded xbox too). The Ninja Gaiden disc might also have a test certificate or just simply has an incorrect track layout as mentioned above. Are you going to dump these though? These discs look pretty cool!

 

[kennypecheur]

Thanks guys for your answers. That incorrect track layout may indeed be a reason, thanks for this information !