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Microsoft Docs Indicate Future Xbox 360 Support For USB Storage
Internal Microsoft documents obtained by Joystiq indicate that its Xbox 360 console will gain support for USB storage devices some time this Spring.
"According to the document, 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.' Upon inserting a blank USB storage device, 'consumers are offered two choices: "Configure now" or "Customize."' The 'Configure now' option will use 'the entire device capacity, up to the maximum of 512 MB plus 16 GB,' meaning, regardless of the overall size of the device you're using, the Xbox will only enable 16 GB of usable, non-system storage. The 'Customize' option will allow you to 'preserve some pre-existing, non-console data on the device' such as music."
There have also been rumors of a new, smaller form factor for the 360, and hacker Ben Heck has given his thoughts on some leaked motherboard pictures.
I'm surprised I haven't seen PS3 fanboys laughing about this before.. it's even worse than not being able to watch DVDs on your Wii's DVD drive..
which is totally what she said
They're still developing new Xbox 360 versions? Usually after so many years, there appear new consoles. But this time it seems none of the big 3 console makers has any plans for this.
Another indication that processing speeds aren't really increasing anymore these days?
Does this means i can use my simple USB stick instead of a memory card to keep my savegames on? (i have two xboxes, so i need portability)
Either MS just killed their memorycard business, or this usb stuff is rather useless..
Also, YAY now you can just get the cheapest arcade xbox you can find, and a $10 usb stick, and have massive fun
People, what a bunch of bastards
It'll be because of region restrictions. I had to buy a region free DVD player to play some stuff. AFAIK they haven't started enforcing region coding on any blu-rays yet.
which is totally what she said
So you can connect an external storage unit, but it'll only use 16GB of it? That's a bit less then the size of the smallest 360 hard drive, which they don't even sell anymore.
I guess they don't want to cannibalize their outrageously priced upgrade drive business.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
The 'Configure now' option will use 'the entire device capacity, up to the maximum of 512 MB plus 16 GB,'
So who sells 16.5 GB USB sticks?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Why cant i quit microsoft...?
it's even worse than not being able to watch DVDs on your Wii's DVD drive..
wiibrew
Watch Wii Menu 4.3 break your homebrew.
I think you are thinking of HD DVDs, which have no region coding.
Blu-rays most certainly do have region coding: A, B and C.
From wikipedia:
* Region A includes most North, Central and South American and Southeast Asian countries plus Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea.
* Region B includes most European, African and southwest Asian countries plus Australia and New Zealand.
* Region C contains the remaining central and south Asian countries, as well as China and Russia.
Some distributors don't use it much, and others are very strict about it. Criterion only is in region A, and Disney tends to only distribute for region A.
...when I can hook up a mouse and keyboard and actually be able to control games with them. My own personal hell is to have to play CODMW2 with a damn joystick.
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I didn't say they don't have it, I said they haven't been enforcing/using it AFAIK. Now I know slightly better.
which is totally what she said
They've been using and enforcing region codes from the very first Blu-Ray releases.
In TFA, they asked Heck whether the 16GB limit is a technological limitation of file systems or a deliberate choice. It seems pretty obvious to me that it's artificial and meant to protect their disk drive market. Considering that USB devices will, unlike now, be trusted storage where one can write DLC, XBLA games and even full game installs and GOD, there's no reason why one would use an externally powered USB drive instead of a small pendrive. That would mean 100$ for a 1TB drive, going in the drive maker's pockets, instead of 100$ for a 120GB drive, going in MS's pockets.
I haven't had the DVD problem, although to be honest I've played maybe one DVD on the system. I've been doing a LOT of UPnP playback from my media server though.
Could you elaborate on what about the PS3 sucks as bad as the Xbox? For a long time I was on the fence between buying a PS3 or 360, especially once FFXIII for 360 was announced. In the end I went with PS3 due to Blu-Ray. I'm glad I did, the PS3 seems to be COMPLETELY different in terms of Sony attitude compared to most of their products in regards to weird nonstandard technologies.
Storage is USB with no "oddball" restrictions. (Just lack of support for "oddball" configurations.)
Cameras are USB UVC devices
Wired headsets are USB audio compliant
Wireless headsets are Bluetooth
Standard USB keyboards/mice work fine
The internal hard drive is SATA and nothing (other than maybe power/thermal limits - is the stock hard drive 5400 RPM or 7200?) restricts you from putting a bigger one in.
I've actually been very pleasantly surprised by the system compared to what I expected prior to owning it. Without planning it, I have a massive pile of accessories for my PS3 which were bought for other purposes.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
When I first read about this, I thought that I'd finally be able to use my NTFS formatted FreeAgent external drive on my 360. Too bad this isn't the case. It's ironic that the 360 doesn't seem to be able to use external drives formatted using the same file system being used in current Windows operating systems.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
That's only for Blu-Ray Movies... PS3 games use a different region encoding with numbers [1]=US and Japan [2]= Europe [3]=Asia [4]=Australia, and yes, it is a different numbering scheme than the R1, R2, etc. used for DVDs.
Go check your PS3 box or any of the game cases, they'll have the region logo on the back it's a little square with a portion of a globe and a number.
I've yet to see a game disc that enforces this, however Downloaded content IS region locked, though only to the account (IE: you can use European content on a US console if you're signed in with a European registered PSN account).
Collector's Edition
My xbox 360 has a 250GB external USB drive attached to it that is used to store copies of home movies.
Although the article isn't as clear as it could be, this is really about adding support for Xbox downloadable content to use USB storage.
Oh, and for a laugh - currently the Xbox can't read NTFS format drives. FAT isn't suitable. So... use a mac, format as HFS+, and the xbox will happily use them.
Any online game that allows a savegame hack to affect online play violates the "do not trust the client... EVER." mantra.
In all but MMO games, one of the clients also acts as the server. Whom should the players trust?
Better yet, why buy a cheap DVD player? It's redundant.
Redundancy has its advantages. When you wear out the drive in a $30 DVD player, you're out $30. When you wear out the drive in an unhacked Wii console, you're out $75 for a drive replacement. But when you wear out the drive in a $200 hacked Wii, on the other hand, you're out $200 plus your savegames. HackMii.com appears to be down right now (returning only "502 Bad Gateway"), but it ran a story sometime last year about Nintendo repairing a console with a dead DVD drive after warranty expiration and charging the owner for a whole new Wii because it was found to have been modded.
It almost seems like you are cheerleading their efforts to break someone's setup.
Once I was looking to develop Wii homebrew games myself. But then I saw two drawbacks.
First, I ran into the so-called "homebrew complexity wall", where a lone developer with a day job will lack the time to provide both high-quality code and high-quality art. In order to replace notoriously bad programmer art, I'd have to charge for my game in order to afford to pay an artist. Reactions to the sale of copies of BootMii-related tools show that the Wii homebrew community likes to keep it strictly non-commercial. Or can you recommend a way to make programmer art better without sticking to making Tetris clones over and over?
Second, I worry that working on homebrew for current consoles, as opposed to PC games, will jeopardize my chances of being hired by an established video game studio once I move out of the backwoods town of 200,000 people where I currently live.
Except the shitty-quality screws Sony uses in the HDD caddy. Chances are you'll strip one minimum while changing the HDD.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
PS3 games DONT have region encoding...
The region label on the cover only shows the "intended" region where the game is meant to be played, but the hardware does not lock out a USA disc in a European PS3.
However, there may be a region issues in terms of Online/Downloadable content. However, thats entirely in the software and is up to the publisher.
Have a nice day!
so couldnt you just make 16gb partitions and have it use multiple ones?
Whoops, I meant to go back and reply to some of your other points after previewing, but hit Submit instead of preview.
There are cameras other than the EyeToy that work on the PS3?
The 360's headsets plug directly into the controller. Unfortunately, this means they probably have a proprietary connector.
Since Xbox 360 wireless controllers are Bluetooth, I'm assuming wireless headphones are too.
Same applies to the 360.
Having said that, I own all three of the modern systems, but the Wii and PS3 are the only ones I paid for. The PS3 was a recent purchase... a used 60GB model, whose HDD I immediately upgraded to 320GB*.
*That's approximately... 298GiB? Stupid HDD manufacturers using 1000 numbering instead of 1024 like OSes do.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
That only applies to the newer Slim version. however, they are just normal screws, easy to obtain. Nothing special.
But yeah, they fitted the "softer" screws to avoid people from damaging the thread on the HD from being idiotic. That was a common issue they observed fromt he earlier PS3, Joe sixpacks ripping the threads on the HDD due to overtightening, or misalignment.
Easier (and cheaper) to replace a screw than a HD.
Have a nice day!
Actually, the connector looks pretty standard.
They just have that extra plastic to attempt to match the controller's look (It didn't work for the Halo 3 Special Edition machines, though -- The controllers are Spartan Green with black Charge 'n Play pack, but the header for that headset is grey).
Except the shitty-quality screws Sony uses in the HDD caddy. Chances are you'll strip one minimum while changing the HDD.
Try using a jewelers screwdriver set (you know, the ones made for tiny screws) and you won't have any problems at all. Frankly, it's scary (and sad) to watch those YouTube videos where people are using their 8" Phillips head screwdriver to work with small parts.
The only reason I bought an xbox was for windows media center. I have played maybe 3 hours of games on it since I purchased it. I tried mythtv with the original xbox, but it just wasn't as elegant. There just isnt a media center out there that is as good as windows media center in terms of the look and feel....there are some solutions out there that contain more functionality though.
Curious about Storage and Virtualization? Check out
When MS dropped the hammer on Datel's large, 3rd party memory cards, they said they had to do it since those devices allowed cheating. That is, they were read/writable from non-Xboxes since they used SD cards for storage and thus you could easily mod saves.
How does MS square that with this action? This device is read/writeable from non-Xboxes since it's regular USB, isn't it?
I personally never believed that MS' actions were for any reason other than to protect their revenue stream. But can't really go back on their story now, can they? Can Datel sue over something like this if they do?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Exactly. But in a pleasant episode of karmic justice, the 360 had a very early firmware hack and is now torn apart with the JTAG hack, while the PS3 is - at least practically - still unhackable.
The extra plastic is an interface for the thumb board. Nothing big.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Standard USB keyboards/mice work fine
Same applies to the 360.
no it doesn't.
Microsoft's guidelines prevent 360 games from shipping with standard USB devices for game input, including but not limited to USB joysticks, USB/bluetooth mice/keyboard(UT3 supports keyboard/mouse input, FWIW; UT for PS2 did the same thing.), etc.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
The 360 needs two cable card readers and the ability to plug in HUGE USB storage devices (1tb HHDs for example). Two cable card readers in the thing and people would start to wonder why they would by a stand alone DVR at all. The 360 has always been just one or two upgrades away from being the perfect home entertainment center. I think the only thing left is cablecard readers and USG mass storage.
DVD upscaling also works, on the 360, DVDs look horrendous, with plenty of aliasing and interlacing artifacts.
Twinstiq, game news
To answer some of your questions:
There are cameras other than the EyeToy that work on the PS3?
Yes any USB cameras that support the UVC standard will work, thoguh some GAMES may require the Playstation Eye.
the Xbox 360 wireless controllers are NOT bluetooth.
As for the other things, here is a comment i wrote for another story.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1587178&cid=31522810
Have a nice day!
One strange thing that the 360 supports: If you plug an iPod into the USB port, it recognizes it and lets you have almost complete control in playing music from it through the 360. I'm not 100% positive but I'm pretty sure it plays purchased AAC files not just MP3. If you plug an iPod into a PS3, it thinks it is an unknown USB device. You would think that the PS3 could get the MP3 files off the iPod but that doesn't seem to work.
They are going through the effort to provide support for external storage drives but they are going to limit the available space to 16(.5) gigs? Are you fuckin' kidding me? What's the point? You can just do a better upgrade yourself!
Background:
There's a drive on the box already. You can't expand or upgrade it (officially) without going out and buying another "XBox" drive. Those "XBox" drives are the exact same fuckin' hard drives we all have in our laptops. The only thing that makes that drive enclosure special is that microsoft decided to create an adapter that plugs in the the SATA, that's right SATA, data port (I told you - exactly the same as laptop drives) and SATA power port on the back of the drive but the plug on the other end that plugs in to the motherboard in the XBox simply has those same wires in a different physical configuration. There are a guides on the web that tell you which drive to buy (just like a laptop hard drive upgrade) that the XBox will read. All you have to do is plug that new, bigger hard drive in to your computer, do some fancy formatting, put it back in the case it came in and plug it in to your XBox. Viola! New bigger hard drive for 1/3 the price with more space than you could've bought in SEVERLY overpriced\hyped "XBox" drives.
And the case:
Honestly?!?!?!?!? You know what causes the Red Ring O' Death? Overheating. That's right, if you use your XBox too much at a time, the entire inside of the case heats up to the point where the motherboard inside warps and chip(s) connections start breaking off. (Incidently, that's why the wrapping-your-xbox-in-a-towel trick works - if you heat the case up a lot, the broken metal that usually makes the chip connections expands and makes contact thus completing the circuit(s) again and the reason it only works a couple times is because all that warping takes a further toll on those connections, making the gap bigger and impossible to cover after a while) AND THEY'RE GONNA MAKE THE CASE SMALLER!!!! I'm sorry, Microsoft has really done some cool hardware stuff but this, is retarded. They had better be finding a way to cool the case. MICROSOFT: TRY MORE FUCKING FANS!!!! How hard is that. Tell me. Have you ever built a custom, gaming PC case that had less than 3 fans in it? The X360 has two! And they're tiny. And you hardly ever hear them. How much air could two tiny fans possibly move in a case that has hardly any air intake vents. This is why I took mine completely apart, down to the light/rrod-ring daughter board, and mounted it up in a custom PC case. I then mounted up the two fans that came with the XBox to that case (that has completely ventilated/mesh front and rear panels) as well as four 120mm case fans. I'll be damned if I have to buy another X360 because some idiot somewhere decided to engineer their product to self destruct.
Posted anonymously 'cause I don't want my XLive account disabled. (-=
_,|,, X360 Hardware Dev Team
Microsoft has managed a profit on the 360 by screwing consumers over at every corner. They have the only paid net service which has no browser so you're tied into what they want you to see. You have to buy wifi seperately at an insane cost. Same with upgrading your hard drive. You can only use their special hard drive which funnily enough costs way more than it should.
Despite their year lead and their supposed superior list of games the PS3 has zoomed up on their ass and has a slim chance of over taking the 360 by the end of the year though not likely.
They claimed the Wii's success didn't matter as it was a totally different market and here MS, like Sony, is dripping off Nintendo's idea of going after casuals with motion control because they got thrashed by Nintendo.
Now they're close to getting beat by Sony because no one outside of the US really cares for the 360 and the PS3 has superior worldwide power so MS is forced to be a little more open, like their competition, to try and maintain their lead.
MS fans should hope Sony over takes the 360 soon. It's about the only way MS will stop screwing their customers.
Hit Triangle, then View All to explore the iPod's directory tree on the PS3. That's for FAT iPods, not the older HFS ones.
The 360's headsets plug directly into the controller. Unfortunately, this means they probably have a proprietary connector.
From personal experience, they're interchangeable with 2.5mm earphone/mic headsets used by lots of cell phones.
It's one less thing to have plugged into the wall.
Then why not just do your gaming, web surfing, and movie watching on a PC?
It's called cutting your loses. You can't win the war using proprietary data storage, so save the cost to the consumer! Almost everyone has spare USB flash drives around. Hell, use those 6 1GB drives you threw into a box and forgot about years ago.
the PS3 remains "unhackable" not because of Karmic justice or amazing copy protection but because of 3 simple facts:
-the Xbox360 was released a year before the ps3, so it had 1 more year to be hacked and 1 more year to make its game library more appealing (increasing interest in hacking it)
-the PS3 had a pretty uninteresting game library up until about a year ago, the install base was also pretty low compared to the other consoles until recently
-the Blu-Ray is a pretty good anti-piracy tool, pirating a ps3 game means a huge download and needing an expensive BR burner with very expensive BR blank discs. Pirating a ps3 game costs... what... maybe 40~60 times more than pirating a xbox360 game ?
at least the last 2 facts mean lower demand which leads to lower supply, as the cost of pirating ps3 games gets lower demand will rise and hacks will appear