360 To Get USB Storage Support In The Next Update

Yes! It has finally happened. Can we finally do away with the over priced 360 Hard Drives?

Documentation obtained by Joystiq shows a successful formatting of a USB storage device. The 360 will gain this ability through the upcoming Spring Update. Once the update occurs 360 owners will be able to download Arcade Games, Indie Games, Videos, Game Data and everything else that can be downloaded off of LIVE.

Disc Games can also be saved to the Storage device. You will need the Disc inside the Disc Tray however for verification purposes. This will also help prevent pirating the game I’m sure. With all that said, what will happen to all the 360 Hard Drives? Well, not much. There’s a catch as with everything in life.

The USB Storage device will have to be at lest 1 GB and the system will do a compatibility check to verify. You have to dedicate the entire Storage Device to the 360. Most non console data will not be allowed on the drive. A “Customize” option will allow for music and other things of that nature. There’s also a maximum amount of data that can be used and it’s not a very high ceiling. Tops out at 16GB per storage space which is less than the original 20GB Hard Drive.Or you can also double up the USB device for a maximum of 32GBs but that’s the maximum. It’s not exactly what we want, but a step in the right direction.

To say this is revolutionary would be incorrect. Sony’s PS3 has had this function since the console launched and I’ve always been envious of that. Microsoft is now catching up. With the addition of the 16GB maximum per storage device, it appears to only add some extra space and will NOT replace the Microsoft Hard Drives. The update will more than likely rid the marked of the Memory Units(MU) however which only have a maximum of 512 MB which is hardly enough for the numerous system updates.

This is definitely some cool news, but not great news. Looks like I’ll still be saving up for that 250GB HDD.