So far 2 of my XBox 360 games just stopped working. Dead Rising & NHL 07. Neither were seriously scratched up or anything. They just won't load. Does anyone know if this is a common problem?

The more likely scenario is your 360 is about to die.

I agree. I haven't read any stories about faulty game discs, but the stories about faulty 360s are numerous. Try your game discs on another 360. If they work, which they probably will, then it is your 360 that is dying.

some people have drives in their 360 that seem to touch the disks, leaving a ring. Mine always have a mirror finish, so if yours arent getting scuffed by the drive, its your xbox thats failing.

That's what I thought too, but the Dead Rising problem happened months ago, when the game was first released. I returned the game to the store and the new disc has worked fine since then. We've also never had a problem with any other game until NHL07 last weekend. I figured that if the console was going to fail, it would have failed by now. Ah, I'll just keep my fingers crossed and keep an eye on the box. Thanks for the input.

I had this issue on Gears, Lost Planet and Dead Rising... with my new (11/07) 360. The games would lock at certain points (usually when loading a cut scene... right after killing RAAM on Gears!). I looked closely at the discs, and saw on each a kind of "blob" discoloration. Looks like a manufacturing defect, so I exchanged the discs.

It definitely fixed the issue on Lost Planet, I haven't tried the other two yet. So, shoddy disc manufacturing could be the answer...