A handful of beta testers, currently having a behind-the-scenes look at a new version of the Xbox 360 dashboard, have revealed that games may take up far less space on our harddisks when the full version is released to the public on August 11.

A number of testers claim that games such as Call of Duty World At War, Gears of War 2 and Halo 3 are taking up less space on the HDD during the preview. According to a report on GamersReport, file sizes for those games have been reduced by 0.1GB, 0.4GB and 0.6GB respectively.

One reader of the site revealed that "any games installed before the update will have to be reinstalled after the update to work properly."

Whether the same will happen when the public dashboard is released, or whether this is a simply a function that occurs during the beta stage remains to be seen. Microsoft has yet to comment.

The dash update includes a number of tweaks to the existing dashboard and services, including user ratings for games and Games On Demand, allowing gamers to download some Xbox 360 games directly to their HDD.

Twitter and Facebook support is set to be added in the Autumn.