Confirmed: USB Storage for 360 in Spring Update

[Isgrimnur]

CNet

Game blog Joystiq has screens of what is says is an upcoming build of the Xbox 360 system software that will allow USB mass storage devices to serve as memory units.

The feature, which Joystiq says is due out in the next few months as part of the Spring system update, will turn any USB-based storage device--be it an external hard drive or a flash drive, to be formatted in sizes up to 16GB, which will work just as the Xbox 360 hard drive and memory units do. This includes allowing users to copy games to these devices, instead of having to spin up the 360's disc drive, as well as saving Live Arcade games, movies, and downloadable content.

Though according to Joystiq, users with a USB hub and a handful of cheap flash drives shouldn't get too excited, as the system limits the number of USB mass storage devices to just two. This means you can have two 16GB partitions handy, for a total of 32 extra gigabytes of storage on top of whatever hard drive you've got.

[Brendan]

Where's Destructor for comment?

[leo8877]

Where's Destructor for comment?

Where's Brendan with confirmation!!? 

[Brendan]

That'd be "unemployed Brendan" you're thinking of.  I prefer to maintain the steady flow of incoming paychecks. 

[leo8877]

That'd be "unemployed Brendan" you're thinking of.

Hehe fair enough 

[metallicorphan]

be good if you could just stick a third party external 500 gig HDD onto the USB and have done with any storage problems,16gig X 2 is alright i supposed,still waiting for confirmation on 250gig HDD on its own

[Teggy]

be good if you could just stick a third party external 500 gig HDD onto the USB and have done with any storage problems,16gig X 2 is alright i supposed,still waiting for confirmation on 250gig HDD on its own

Yeah, ho hum. 16GB isn't all that useful. I don't really want a stack of thumb drives next to my 360 holding my games.

[The Grue]

be good if you could just stick a third party external 500 gig HDD onto the USB and have done with any storage problems,16gig X 2 is alright i supposed,still waiting for confirmation on 250gig HDD on its own

But then MS wouldn't make a stupid amount of money overcharging people for their proprietary hard drives.

[Vidiot]

Hmm... USB is a bit limiting in speed, but it should still be faster than the 16x DVD.  I'm thinking a small SSD in a USB HDD enclosure to install games to.

[Harkonis]

we can spin this around... I'm in the camp that if it wasn't true, Brendan would tell us something similar.  By not commenting, he's confirming!  Can I have my gaming press badge now?  That seems to qualify me for IGN employment

[Isgrimnur]

They should really tie this to a way to sign in your GamerTag as a secondary to another console.  Imagine being able to take a USB of your Rock Band DLC with you, hook it up to your buddy's machine, put in a guest secondary log-in that would be good for, say, 6 hours, and allow you to add your DLC into the machine for a Rock Band party.  You could have the validation server-side so there's nothing to hack, make it a limited time event, de-authorized by a log-out, system, shut-down, or the main console being logged in, etc.  

[Brendan]

we can spin this around... I'm in the camp that if it wasn't true, Brendan would tell us something similar.  By not commenting, he's confirming!  Can I have my gaming press badge now?  That seems to qualify me for IGN employment

That logic might work for kathode, but I don't work anywhere near the games group - even physically!  So, fortunately, I'm blissfully unaware of most goings-on.

[Gratch]

be good if you could just stick a third party external 500 gig HDD onto the USB and have done with any storage problems,16gig X 2 is alright i supposed,still waiting for confirmation on 250gig HDD on its own

Yeah, ho hum. 16GB isn't all that useful. I don't really want a stack of thumb drives next to my 360 holding my games.

Since I'm still on a 20GB HD, I'd welcome the chance to add another 16.

[Purge]

we can spin this around... I'm in the camp that if it wasn't true, Brendan would tell us something similar.  By not commenting, he's confirming!  Can I have my gaming press badge now?  That seems to qualify me for IGN employment

That logic might work for kathode, but I don't work anywhere near the games group - even physically!  So, fortunately, I'm blissfully unaware of most goings-on.

CONFIRMATION!!!! (You know, he keeps his thumb on the pulse of gaming... he's an addict) \

PS. I'm kidding.

[Bullwinkle]

My reaction upon seing this thread to finding out what was actually happening:  

[Isgrimnur]

My reaction was similar.  Went from convinced that I could use an external drive of any size (if I ever fill up my 120) to realizing that I personally will likely never have a need for this new feature.  However, I'm sure there are some 20GB (Gratch) and Arcade owners who are much more the target demo for this feature. 

[TiLT]

This will be very nice for Xbox Live Indie Games developers who would usually have to purchase a memory unit for testing. With this change we can test using just a regular thumbdrive or something similar, and most of us should have something like that.

[Destructor]

be good if you could just stick a third party external 500 gig HDD onto the USB and have done with any storage problems,16gig X 2 is alright i supposed,still waiting for confirmation on 250gig HDD on its own

Yeah, ho hum. 16GB isn't all that useful. I don't really want a stack of thumb drives next to my 360 holding my games.

Since I'm still on a 20GB HD, I'd welcome the chance to add another 16.

Agreed totally.

Also, if I could use one of my (many) portable/flash drives in my 360, I could do something like move the 1.2GB worth of Rock Band 1 songs on my HD off and then I could install two games at once to my tiny 20GB.

Definitely a good thing in the end, IMHO. Now I have no reason whatsoever to get a bigger drive.

[EddieA]

I really hope this is true.  My hard drive is usually full, and I have to make space every time I want to download a new demo.  Since I don't download movies, 16 more GB would be more than enough for me.

[Mithridates]

be good if you could just stick a third party external 500 gig HDD onto the USB and have done with any storage problems,16gig X 2 is alright i supposed,still waiting for confirmation on 250gig HDD on its own

Yeah, ho hum. 16GB isn't all that useful. I don't really want a stack of thumb drives next to my 360 holding my games.

Since I'm still on a 20GB HD, I'd welcome the chance to add another 16.

Me too.  I've never filled the 20, but I figure it will happen some day.

[Vidiot]

I really hope this is true.  My hard drive is usually full, and I have to make space every time I want to download a new demo.  Since I don't download movies, 16 more GB would be more than enough for me.

That is a great idea, put an install of rock band 2 and all of the songs on a usb key or hdd and just plug it in when you want to play.

I also hope we can put our gamer profiles and DLC on one of these and take it with us to a friends, that would definitely be helpful.  Even if not though, for us 20GB'ers adding 16GB more is pretty huge.

[Razgon]

Is there some sort of identifier for an USB drive? I mean, can you have say 10 16GB's USB sticks and just exchange them after whatever game you want to play? Or does the system recognize the individual USB drive and only allows 2 different ones?

[Destructor]

Is there some sort of identifier for an USB drive? I mean, can you have say 10 16GB's USB sticks and just exchange them after whatever game you want to play? Or does the system recognize the individual USB drive and only allows 2 different ones?

I'm gonna say the first. You can only have two plugged in at any one time (even though the 360 has 3 USB ports), but I'm guessing there will be no upward limit.

[Purge]

be good if you could just stick a third party external 500 gig HDD onto the USB and have done with any storage problems,16gig X 2 is alright i supposed,still waiting for confirmation on 250gig HDD on its own

Yeah, ho hum. 16GB isn't all that useful. I don't really want a stack of thumb drives next to my 360 holding my games.

Since I'm still on a 20GB HD, I'd welcome the chance to add another 16.

Me too.  I've never filled the 20, but I figure it will happen some day.

You won't on the three-siddy... you only get 11GB of that 20GB drive anyways.

[Kemper Boyd]

The coolest part of this is that it could make the arcade a much more viable system for MS. Drop the price a little more, include a 2GB (or lower) USB drive with the system - just to give noobs the idea - and then have a ton of XBLA and DLC customers where they can really make some money.

[kronovan]

If they did what Nintendo did with SD cards -allowed you to play XBLA games off of a USB storage device- that would be awesome. I typically only have 1 game on the go right now, so I only ever really need have 1 game at a time ripped to the HD. If they allowed me to store XBLA's on a USB drive, I could make do nicely with my 20GB.

[Isgrimnur]

I'm stealing denoginizer's link.

On April 6th, we will be releasing a system update over Xbox LIVE for your Xbox 360 that will allow USB flash drives to be used for storing profiles, game saves, demos and more.  I’ve been testing this feature out for a few weeks, and I have to say it’s really great. Once you take the system update on April 6th, you’ll be able to connect your USB flash drives to your console and head over to the memory section to configure your new storage device. Once you do that, the system will conduct a one time performance and integrity check to confirm the drive is working properly. You will then be able to configure how much storage to use on the device, up to 16 GB. The remaining space on the flash drive will be accessible by your PC or Mac.

[Brendan]

It is, in fact, pretty great - I moved my profile to one of the million USB keys I had lying around the house, and it handled it seamlessly.

[coopasonic]

You will then be able to configure how much storage to use on the device, up to 16 GB. The remaining space on the flash drive will be accessible by your PC or Mac.

At first I was sad that it was limited to 16GB, but now that I know you can partition a device I'm happy. I can use my 32GB drive. OK, I don't know what I would actually use it for... but I can use it!

[Turtle]

This probably probably coincides with MS making a new slim SKU for the 360. Going with a cheap USB storage solution such as the a flash drive in the box allows for extra cost cutting. We might see an arcade sku go as low as $170

[Larraque]

What I really want from this - what I hope you can do - is take a USB Keydrive and use it as a memory unit for playing MP3s on the xbox. IMO the most underrated feature of the xbox is the ability to load music on the machine and replace most games soundtrack with your own songs. It made Borderlands a good deal more fun since I was blowing stuff up to Radiohead and Muse.

However, I no longer buy CDs so getting music loaded onto the xbox is a challenge. There might be an easier way that I'm not aware of but I found the media center integration stopped working when you started a game.

[warning]

I can hook my Sansa Fuze up to the 360 via a USB cable and access the music from there.  I haven't tried it in-game but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

[Vidiot]

Sweet, SSD on my xbox here I come!

[Larraque]

I can hook my Sansa Fuze up to the 360 via a USB cable and access the music from there.  I haven't tried it in-game but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

I don't have a portable MP3 player...

What I tried to do was plug a USB hard drive (granted it was 500GB) and see if I could copy music off it. I couldn't.

[Caine]

it annoys me to no end that they limit the partition size to 16gb.  i have several unused portable hd and there's no way in hell i'm going to bother setting up 16 separate partitions just to get the full use of a 250 drive. 

this replaces the mem card, and for that it's good, but still a damn stupid limit and totally useless for most people.

yeah, i know it's so they don't lose the sweet insane markup of their retail drives, but i can't be happy for such a nerfed feature.

[Victoria Raverna]

I'm stealing denoginizer's link.

On April 6th, we will be releasing a system update over Xbox LIVE for your Xbox 360 that will allow USB flash drives to be used for storing profiles, game saves, demos and more.  I’ve been testing this feature out for a few weeks, and I have to say it’s really great. Once you take the system update on April 6th, you’ll be able to connect your USB flash drives to your console and head over to the memory section to configure your new storage device. Once you do that, the system will conduct a one time performance and integrity check to confirm the drive is working properly. You will then be able to configure how much storage to use on the device, up to 16 GB. The remaining space on the flash drive will be accessible by your PC or Mac.

Only 16 GB extra storage?

[Brendan]

Only 16 GB extra storage?

x2

[metallicorphan]

http://kotaku.com/5505029/rumor-xbox-360s-usb-flash-drives-are-yes-expensive

A pair of listings on retail site GameStop indicate that Microsoft's first-party flash drive offerings are running a little on the costly side. An 8GB stick is listed at $40, while a 16GB stick is priced at $70. That's almost twice the price of standard USB flash drives of similar size.

[leo8877]

http://kotaku.com/5505029/rumor-xbox-360s-usb-flash-drives-are-yes-expensive

A pair of listings on retail site GameStop indicate that Microsoft's first-party flash drive offerings are running a little on the costly side. An 8GB stick is listed at $40, while a 16GB stick is priced at $70. That's almost twice the price of standard USB flash drives of similar size.

Shocking!

[Destructor]

http://kotaku.com/5505029/rumor-xbox-360s-usb-flash-drives-are-yes-expensive

A pair of listings on retail site GameStop indicate that Microsoft's first-party flash drive offerings are running a little on the costly side. An 8GB stick is listed at $40, while a 16GB stick is priced at $70. That's almost twice the price of standard USB flash drives of similar size.

Shocking!

Seriously, is anybody surprised that Microsoft is overcharging for this too? I sure as heck am not.