Laser Burning Risk On Xbox One-S While Upright?

The lasers that are built into consumer electronics are not powerful enough to literally burn a disc. Even when we're talking about consumer 'disc burners' they don't actually burn the disc. In a professional environment there is a laser etching process
that occurs for mastering and duplication. Home devices however use a much lower powered laser that merely affects a layer of dye on the consumer grade discs and makes the dye turn darker. That's why oftentimes home 'burned' discs are unreadable after several
years.

The risk that happens when standing up a console 'upright' is that it is easier for the disc to bump into the mechanisms inside the drive and get damaged from physical contact. That's a problem with pretty much any optical disc based system and not one that
can be easily worked around due to regulations on strength of the read/write lasers in consumer products. That leads to an extremely close proximity to the actual read mechanism and even vibrations from a decent home theater system can cause that contact to
happen.

I personally would never set a console 'upright' due to the increased risk of disc damage, the increased ease with which pets/other people can knock over the device, etc.

So it can be done, but you're more likely to end up with scratched discs in the long run.

Also for more information see this page:

https://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/console/position-console

Basically recommended is horizontal, but you can do vertical on the S with a stand, but the same caveats I've mentioned apply.

If it is an older model 360 the laser mechanism may burn a ring into the disc if the console is moved. Also is it laying flat or standing up? Laying the console on its side also helps to reduce the risk of laser burn.

They make a special stand for it to stand upright but that only fits the Xbox One S.

I'm sure you'll be fine if you place it upright propped up against a bookend or similar. You won't be using discs and I'll assume you don't have any pets or kids that would knock it over. If you do, then use at own risk is definitely warranted.

Good luck.

Well, wierdly enough I got it to run a disc... I layed it down flat instead of upright in the Xbox One S stand that I got with it and it has run the game.

Not sure why that has happened since my old Xbox One was upright for 2 years and ran discs perfectly fine until 4 days ago...

Will have to check my old Xbox One while flat to see if that was the same reason it wouldn't work.

The original XBox one cannot be used upright, only S and X with a Stand.

Sounds like the burn might have damaged the laser.

try playing other games. If it works then its the laser or CD.

This sounds like my old xbox. After a while it stopped reading discs.