The front of your Xbox 360 has two USB slots. If you're like us, one of them probably has a Rock Band microphone plugged in, but wouldn't it be nice if you could store game saves or entire games on USB sticks? Soon, you'll be able to do just that, if a Joystiq report on the matter is accurate. Citing fresh documentation and confirmation from two separate sources, the consumer blog says that "USB Mass Storage Device Support on Xbox 360" is on the way.
USB storage device recognized in dash (thanks to Joystiq)
The document comes from a senior software development engineer at Microsoft, who states that due to "increased market penetration of high-capacity, high throughput USB mass storage devices, a 2010 Xbox 360 system update" will allow consumers to save and load game data from USB devices. The update is likely coming this spring.
"USB storage devices may, however, have far greater memory capacity than MUs (at the date of writing, the largest MU is 512 MB), and may therefore support previously infeasible operations-such as installation of a full disc-based title," the document notes. What this means is that not only will you be able to store Xbox Live Arcade games, Xbox Live Indie games, DLC and other content to a USB memory device, but you'll also be able to install entire retail disc-based games similar to how you'd use the hard drive on 360. You'll still need the disc to be in the DVD drive as usual, however.
Joystiq speculates that Microsoft may soon abandon its MU business entirely in favor of supporting USB devices, and we're inclined to agree. Microsoft will still make a killing on their overpriced proprietary hard drives, however, and this pending USB solution actually won't allow consumers to circumvent the hard drive issue. Why? Because Microsoft decided to cap the USB device memory at 16GB each, with a maximum of two allowed, providing for a total of 32GB of extra storage at the most. It's nice to have, but if you're serious about your downloadable content you'll likely want much more storage than that and need to buy a hard drive if you don't have one already.
Other technical specifications from the document reveal that the USB mass storage device must be at least 1GB and the system will do a compatibility check. "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," it reads. When a new USB storage device is plugged in users will choose either 'Configure now' or 'Customize.' The first option is essentially a fresh format, preparing the device to use its whole capacity, whereas the latter option enables a user to "preserve some pre-existing, non-console data on the device" such as music.
We think this is a great idea - one that should have been implemented a long time ago - but it's too bad Microsoft is capping the storage at 32GB (although we certainly understand why from a business standpoint).
19 Comments
March 19, 2010
This would fit with the earlier rumor of a new version of the hardware, since some observed that there wasn't a slot for a Memory Unit. USB thumb drives could be an excellent substitute.
March 19, 2010
Considering the USB's will be cheaper than current memory cards I think this will work out quite nicely.
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