Report: Spring 2010 Xbox 360 update to add support for USB storage devices

This Spring’s Xbox 360 update may have a big surprise for console owners: support for USB mass storage devices.

This Spring’s Xbox 360 update may have a big surprise for console owners: support for USB mass storage devices. According to a Joystiq report, that’s what some leaked documents and two separate sources point to.

The document, which is reportedly from one of Microsoft’s senior software devs, states that USB storage support will be added to the Xbox 360 due to “increased market penetration of high-capacity, high throughput USB mass storage devices”.

The update, dated for Spring 2010, will allow Xbox 360 owners to save and load game data from USB devices. It will also let gamers download Xbox Live Arcade games, Xbox Live Indie games, Games on Demand, DLC and Title Updates to connected storage devices.

Installing full games to an external storage devices is also a supported feature, although this will require the original disc to be placed in the drive for authentication.

There’s a bit of a catch, though. No matter the actual storage capacity of your USB drive, the Xbox 360 will only enable a maximum of 16 GB of usable, non-system storage, along with an additional 512 MB for the system partition. 

More info is available in the source link below.

Via [Joystiq]