XBOX 360 **CONFIDENTIAL** internal OBA test discs!!! :O

[OptOut | 8,892]

Very exciting find over here in @OptOut land ladies and gentlemen! Purchased here from a random online seller I have just obtained a small trove of Internal Microsoft OBA test discs for the XBOX 360! 

There isn't much to find online about these, they seem pretty rare. I found one article here describing them, after a random dude found one inside his brand new XBOX 360 S:

https://www.gamezone.com/news/microsoft_including_free_copies_of_games_with_new_360_models_or_manufa/

According to that source these games were finished retail ready code printed onto these test discs and used for internal testing of various kinds. Apparently some of them ended up hanging around 360 system production facilities to test newly manufactured consoles, and a few ended up slipping out into the world as stowaways inside retail systems!

Let's just take a closer look at the four titles I have here, we have two Rareware games, which is very exciting for me personally as a big Rareware fan, and we also have mother humping HALO 3 and Gears of War!!! 

To begin, we have Perfect Dark Zero here, printed in December of 2005, shortly after the launch of the 360 in the US.

Here is Kameo: Elements of power, printed with the same date. Strangely this game is the only one of the four lacking the usual XBOX 360 hologram on the interior ring of the disc. I am not sure why that is, but it does have other holographic elements in the inner ring, such as the barcode and serial number. Very curious!

Halo bloody 3 mate, this is nuts!  This was printed in December 2007, which is several months after the launch of the game. Perhaps these were printed in new production runs of games, testing the set up for subsequent printings after the original? Who knows?! 

Finally we have Gears of War here, another solid title for sure! This one seems a little different to the others because it says Media Set DVD on it in the title, I really have no clue what that means! It also has some stickers on the front which is uncool, I don't like stickers on discs. 

 

Okay, so there you have it! If anyone else has any more of these discs, please post pictures here, Id really like it if we could start to develop a list of titles known to have been produced in OBA test versions. Also, if anyone has any more specific information about how and why these discs were made, what they were used for and how they managed to make it into the public in the first place, please contribute below!!!! 

[drxandy | 3,236]

Heck ya those are awesome!! Nice snag my dood!!

[OptOut | 8,892]

39 minutes ago, drxandy said:

Heck ya those are awesome!! Nice snag my dood!!

Yeah I'm so happy!

I bought them alongside a spare 360 model E which came with an official carry case and all the power adaptor and cords and controller etc. Spent the evening using the Halo 3 OBA Test disc to literally TEST my new system, as Microsoft always intended lol!

I can confirm based on my testing that the Halo 3 OBA disc works identically to a standard retail copy of Halo 3. It is so damn cool!

Do you have any 360 OBA discs in your collection? I know you have a lot of demos and NFR and other stuff, you have any of these or seen these before?

[drxandy | 3,236]

I don't! I have seen em out on the eBay, just never pulled the trigger or anything. I did only start on 360 stuff around 2017? So pretty late to the game. Great games to get though, I'm sure the big names command a higher price for sure, and halo fans pay up haha.

[360collector | 289]

oh ma lord

[Brickman | 4,012]

Great pickups! Also glad to see they are actually great games and not something like a Kinect game or something. Look forward to seeing what else gets posted here.

[JamesRobot | 5,825]

Thas dope yo.