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.

Comments

Orly?

[somersault]

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..

Re:Orly?

[ShakaUVM]

>>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..

Or, uh, PC gamer fanboys, who have been able to use USB drives with their gaming boxes since ~1998.

Still Xbox 360?

[Lord Lode]

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?

Re:Still Xbox 360?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The more accurate term would probably be "revision" rather than "version".

With the limited exception of assimilating certain things that used to be optional extras as they become cheap(eg. original PS2 had ethernet as an add-on module, by the time the PS2 slim came around, an embedded NIC was much more sensible than an option port), console makers don't really have much incentive to change specs too often, since they are generally trying to cut costs over the console's lifetime, and avoid fragmentation of the market.

However, while substantial spec changes are comparatively rare, and have historically proven to be a bad idea, most consoles go through numerous revisions(some fairly subtle, and visible only to people who care about inspecting motherboards in detail, others quite visible for marketing purposes, like the new PS3 design) that leave the specs largely the same +/- a few nonessential peripherals; but aim at reducing production costs and correcting flaws in older designs.

No more expensive memory cards?

[Vectormatic]

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

Re:No more expensive memory cards?

[Vectormatic]

to a certain degree yes, but as i pointed out, i have two 360s, and i need to move my profile from machine to machine (along with saves). The only easy way to do this is to have the profile and saves on a memory card, which are frickin expensive.

Also, not all 360's come with a hard drive, the arcade/core version have no hard drive (later arcades come with built in 256mb flash). And again.. If you want to move around profiles/saves on the xbox, a memory card is the only easy way to do it (for profiles you could 'recover' it through XBL, but that is a bit stupid when gaming at a friends place, and requires internet. You could also swap hard disks, but that doesnt allow you and your buddy to both use your own profiles at the same time)

Oy

[Tridus]

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.

Re:Oy

[Anonymous Coward]

And savegame hacking is a problem how?

If people want to ruin their game experience by cheating or whatever, that's up to them.

Re:Oy

[Andy Dodd]

Any online game that allows a savegame hack to affect online play violates the "do not trust the client... EVER." mantra.

Violating that mantra almost always leads to crap multiplayer with rampant cheating for one reason or another. When I first saw Crysis' description of why they separated DX10 players from DX9 (more powerful systems to perform physics calculations on, implying that world physics was *offloaded to the client*) I was worried that multiplayer was going to have some cheating problems. Boy was I right... I played multiplayer for about a week then uninstalled Crysis. It's NOT good when someone can change one XML file and make their pistol bullets do 9999999 damage and their vehicles immune to all weapons fire.

Strange Sizing

[clickety6]

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?

Re:Strange Sizing

[Fieryphoenix]

$99.99

The 16GB limit

[NeverNow]

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.

Re:Ha Ha...

[Andy Dodd]

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.

Already has mass storage support

[paulhar]

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.

When you wear out the drive

[tepples]

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.