Xbox 360 broken after new update? A free console could be in the mail.

Xbox 360 consoles damaged by a recent firmware update will be replaced by Microsoft for no cost, company reps confirmed this week. Microsoft said it was in the process of locating customers affected by the problems; if you're among the unlucky few –– and the number of busted machines is thought to be relatively low –– you should soon receive through the mail a shiny new Xbox 360 S with 250GB hard drive.

"Following a recent update to our system software, we have become aware of an issue that is preventing a very small number of Xbox 360 owners from playing retail game discs," Microsoft told Eurogamer. "This issue manifests itself as a unique 'disc unreadable' or 'disc unsupported' error on the screen. We are also able to detect this issue over Xbox Live and are proactively reaching out to customers that may be impacted to replace their console."

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Meanwhile, over at CNET, Don Reisinger follows the story of one user who was tracked down by Microsoft. That user was offered the Xbox 360 S, and also a free 12-month subscription to Xbox Live, good through the end of September. So hey, if your Xbox 360 starts acting weird, don't totally freak out. There may be a silver lining to the system outage.

In related news, Microsoft announced today that Gears of War 3 had become the fastest pre-ordered title in the history of the Xbox 360. So how many rabid Gears fans does it take to break the record in that particular category? Plenty of them, it turns out: Microsoft's Larry Hyrb wrote on the Major Nelson blog that upward of a million pre-orders had already been placed for Gears of War 3, which isn't due on shelves until September.

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RELATED: See how a video game outsold the top movie, book, and DVD