Xbox 360 Gets USB Storage Support

In documentation obtained by Joystiq and confirmed by two other sources, it appears that the Xbox 360 will get USB Mass Storage support in an upcoming 2010 update. In the document, a senior developer at Microsoft says, because of “increased market penetration of high-capacity, high throughput USB mass storage devices, a 2010 Xbox 360 system update” will let consumers save and load game data from USB devices.

Once you get the update, supposedly coming Spring of 2010, you will be able to download Xbox Live Arcade games, Xbox Live Indie games, Games on Demand, DLC and Title Updates to the storage device. You can even store an entire disc-based title directly on the mass storage device. Of course, you will still need to have the disc in the tray for authentication purposes.

There are a few caveats regarding just how much data you will be able to store on the USB device. Once you connect a device (which must be at least 1GB), you get the option to configure or customize the device. “The system partition occupies 512 MB of space, and by default the consumer partition occupies the remainder of the device capacity, or 16 GB, whichever is smaller.” This means that you can get a maximum of 16GB of space, regardless of the actual size of the storage device. Choosing “Customize” allows you to “preserve some pre-existing, non-console data on the device” such as music.

You might be thinking that you can finally escape buying a larger hard drive from Microsoft for your xbox 360, but the limitations of 16GB pretty much kill that noise. Even if you connected 2 storage devices, that’s still only 32GB, which is about 100GB less than the current 120GB offerings from MS. All this really does is remove the requirement to save your game data on an MU. The Xbox will only recognize the first two storage devices connected, so you get no love their either. Microsoft has their artificial limitations on lock.

Joystiq speculates that this may simply be a move to get rid of Memory Units entirely. There have also been rumors of a new Xbox form factor. It seems plausible that this is part of a plan to get rid of the MU slots entirely.

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Rahsheen has been a certified geek since before it was the thing to do. He started programming and tinkering in the 4th grade. Now, Rahsheen mostly writes on various sites about technology trends in social media and mobile. . He is also a musician, singer, rapper, writer, and producer. @rahsheen - +Rahsheen Porter - coachrah.com
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