Microsoft has today confirmed earlier reports that the Xbox 360 is getting a USB storage solution. Major Nelson announced that on April 6, a new update will be available for the 360, allowing users to store their games and content on flash drives, rather than the stupid memory cards that nobody ever used because they were stupid.
As reported, you can only save up to 16BG of information, making this new update practically useless for anybody who has a lot of content. USB hard drives may also work with the 360, but again, the console will limit access to 16GB. There is a slight workaround, with Major Nelson revealing that you can connect two USB memory devices at once for a combined 32GB of storage. If you want to plug a load of stuff into your 360 like it is a terminally ill hospital patient, that's the option for you.
Any flash drive will be permitted, but Microsoft is partnering with SanDisk to create a line of specifically branded Xbox 360 drives that will be pre-configured for use with the console (other drives require manual configuration). Thus we now know why Microsoft is doing this -- it wants to sell you more overly expensive versions of things you can buy for cheaper elsewhere.
So there you go. USB storage for your 360, only kind of useless.
USB Memory Support for the Xbox 360 coming April 6th [Major Nelson]
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Contest:
9:00 AM on 03.26.2010
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You rock. Just like Bowie.
Surely you could, technically, get a large hard drive and partition it into 16GB sizes can't you? I'm not nerdy enough to know for sure.
Also, Bowie.
/losing out on some games, but voting with my wallet, etc.
If you want to fill the bitch up with music and movies, play even better games and blu-rays, and play them online for free - just get a PS3
i love having my movie collection and entire music collection on my PS3, it's almost like it's some kind of media centre or something.
...having said that, 16GB in 2010 IS ridiculous, especially as it's just so they can charge over double what the drive is worth because nobody can stop them.
I already have a PS3 and an XBox. And I can watch my entire movie collection, and listen to my entire music collection on my XBox since I can just stream that stuff from my PC to my XBox. Not to mention I have my Media Center connected.
Lame. Still it seems like somebody will find a workaround eventually. It just sounds too simple to not be made as simple as it sounds.
In the meantime all my media streams throughout my house from the PC so no worries. My HDD is exclusively for demos, DLC, and RB songs.
Yeah the 16GB limit is kind of meh, but I am interested. If you have a smaller hard drive (or people with none and just the internal Memory Unit on the cheap-y 360), having plug and play backups for saves is good in itself. You can find 16 GB ones for super cheap.
I wound up buying the cheap-o 360 (it was during that $99 XBox 360 Arcade promotion at Wal-Mart) last fall and mainly use it for Orange Box, Netflix, and XBLA games. Seriously being able to add ad hoc storage for more XBLA stuff without having to buy a new hard drive (or buy a possibly dodgy used one) is great. I have several USB flash drives around the house right now. I am coming to the point where I, without adding a drive, would have to delete saves or downloaded games, but now, not so much.
I may be more used to this, having had a Wii since launch. My Virtual Console/WiiWare games/saves I am not using go on a Flash card (and I can run them from there, if I wanted) and the stuff I am currently working on are on the console. This works for me, since, as you can tell, I play a decent amount of downloadable stuff and most of the stuff on my "need to get" list are cheap, downloadable games/retro re-releases/etc.
So sure, I may not be the typical "core" gamer (who has a 120+ GB hard drive already) but if the hardware can support it, and all they need to push is an update, that is an awesome thing indeed.
Beyond that, being able to move saves, dlc, etc. is great. For party games, music games like Rock Band/Guitar Hero, etc. moving around saves with unlocked crap and DLC is sometimes exactly what you need when going over to a friend's place. Even in the Gamecube days, my best friend would bring over not his GC, but his memory card with all his Mario Party/Warioware/Smash Bros. unlocks, since even though I had some of those games as well, I may have not unlocked everything.
i don't know what i'd do without my 500gb PS3.
Curse you, Major Nelson!
My 20 gig HD is fucking killllling me, so I'd be more than happy to add a bit more storage with a USB drive. Better than nothing, not gonna bitch about it.
This change is just to enable USB media to act as the proprietary memory cards do, which is nice for taking DLC, games and your gamertag around to other xboxes.