Microsoft Enabling USB Mass Storage For Xbox 360

Microsoft Enabling USB Mass Storage For Xbox 360

Joystiq obtained leaked information in the form of a document that suggests that the Xbox 360 will support USB mass storage devices in the near future. The screenshots reveal support for externally connected devices that are well over the 512 MB capacity of Microsoft’s current Xbox 360 memory units which are pretty low in terms of memory and on the road to being obsolete. The document which is written by a senior software development engineer at Microsoft stats that due to “increased market penetration of high-capacity, high throughput USB mass storage devices, a 2010 Xbox 360 system update” will allow people to load and save game data from USB devices. According to the document, the USB mass storage device must at least have 1GB of free space and the system will do a compatibility check for this. “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.” The update mentioned by the software engineer is said to release in Spring 2010.

Once the update is released, Xbox 360 owners will be able to down content from the marketplace and store them in the storage device. Microsoft mentioned that “USB storage devices may, however, have far greater memory capacity than Memory Units (at the date of writing, the largest Memory Unit is 512 MB), and may therefore support infeasible operations – such as installation of a full disc-based title.” Basically we’ll even be able to store disc-based games to the USB device; however it will require the disc to be in the tray for authentication, identical to the current functionality. They will surely be implementing some new protection for games otherwise piracy will reach an all-time high.

It should be clear that Microsoft is trying to pull out of the Memory Unit business and not entirely from the Xbox hard drive business. With an artificial cap of 16 GB – still 4GB shy of the 20 GB hard drive that shipped with the original Xbox Pro and a fraction of the size of the 120 GB hard drive that is currently shipping – USB storage support simply removes the requirement of Memory Units on Xbox 360 Arcade units and brings the 360 platform a feature that has been present on the Playstation 3 since the console’s launch in 2006.

With the talk of a new Xbox 360 Slim being released and plans to abandon Memory Units in the works, we’re guessing that the Memory Unit slots could be cut entirely from future versions of the console. So, do you think Microsoft is headed in the right direction with this plan of theirs? Share your thoughts and comments below.