March 26th 2010 1:00 pm PT

Amazing

Great news….thanks!
this is the only new feature o fix in this update?

Just a quick technical question. Would it be possible to have a 32gb flash drive partitioned into two 16gb readable drives? Or is it 16gb per device up to 2 devices?

I guess this will be handy if you have 2 xboxes at home , should make it easy to transfer game saves between the 2 .

Very good news, now I have a second use for my thumb drive.

I wonder if it is possible to change the drive back if you choose not to use it anymore for the 360. What I’m gathering is that you are setting aside space just for the 360.

This will make an amazing replacement for my 64MB memory card.

Nice one.. my 512mb MU was filling up. plus if for any reason my 360 dies. i’ll have all my save data on a usb stick and not the HDD

I’m also curious of what else is included in the “Spring” update. Will there be a beta tester opportunity as in the past?

@Chicken Wyng you can format your flash drive anytime via your pc

wow… seven comments in and nobody’s complaining about the size limit yet…

I’m sure it’s coming.

Either way, not something I’ll likely be using as I don’t store anything except my profile on my memory card but definitely a cool feature.

Thank you for bringing us this. I have a couple of HDD’s that I rarely use that will be perfect for this. Especially since my 360′s 120gb HDD is almost full, and I also like the idea of having a backup thumbdrive for it. Great move!

Great News

Don’t think I’ll ever need this feature, my 250GB HDD has more than enough room, and I don’t have gaming friends locally. Nonetheless, pretty cool.

Thank GOD! I have a 64MB MU and I simply could not justify the NZ$80 it would cost me for a 512MB MU after I already spent NZ$60 for the MU I currently have – especially when I was sitting around thinking “I already have USB harddrives and thumbdrives with loads more storage… why can’t I just use those?!”

I am hugely, massivley, amazingly grateful for this addition to Xbox LIVE. I <3 you even more than I used to.

Hey I was looking at the screen shoots & I noticed on one of them you have 293 GB of free space. Is that the larger drive that you had someone install on your work Xbox 360 or is it a sign of what may come in the future? I was hoping for more like the 500 GB range like we now have for the 2.5″ drives that I think you might be using.

Mcmax3000: Doh guess I am going to be the one to burst the bubble then. And it’s not so much a complaint as it is a question of why such an arbitrary number? I mean if you can make it max at 16GB, working with storage for a living, I can’t understand why they couldn’t expand it out even further other than wanting to simply impose that as a restriction. Aside from that though I like the idea. Using usb sticks instead of an MU just seems like common sense and it’s about time it’s being taken advantage of. And having a nice place to archive my saves, just in case, is always a good thing.

You know what this means, right?

Here comes the Xbox 360 Slim, that won’t use the old memory cards, but USB sticks.

Will this let me bring my Rock Band tracks to use on someone else’s xbox for a party? Please tell me that’s possible.

Mcmax3000: Doh guess I am going to be the one to burst the bubble then. And it’s not so much a complaint as it is a question of why such an arbitrary number? I mean if you can make it max at 16GB, working with storage for a living, I can’t understand why they couldn’t expand it out even further other than wanting to simply impose that as a restriction. Aside from that though I like the idea. Using usb sticks instead of an MU just seems like common sense and it’s about time it’s being taken advantage of. And having a nice place to archive my saves, just in case, is always a good thing.

Great.

Now I will be able to bring any future game that I buy from GoD on a usb stick to my friend house without bring the whole hd.

I’m guessing the 293GB HDD would be because its a dev box. I’d figure they have options of shuffling out drives, which would be really nice….hint hint.

Ack double post up above…sorry bout that.

Can games on disk be installed to the flash drive? Will they run faster off the flash drive?

Is this “The Spring update”? or is that coming later?

This is definitely good news, I won’t discredit it, and will definitely be taking advantage of this feature. But really, only 16 gigs per stick? Would be nice not to be limited like that, but I guess Microsoft doesn’t want people using external hard drives.

I really wish Microsoft would just cave in and do like Sony does with their PS3 and let you buy whatever size HDD you want. They would rather make money off of the game sales than off of the HDD sales, which I think is smart. My buddy bought a PS3 (mostly just for FFXIII and as a cheap blu-ray player), but the amount of stuff you can do with their memory support compared to the 360 is like night and day. And you can throw media files, like movies, right on the main hard drive.

I still have a 20 gig HDD (I’ve moved most of my gaming to the PC) and I refuse to pay double or triple the cost for an HDD when I know how much they retail for (what the suppliers charge is probably much less). Make money off of games and downloads, because I refuse to download them until I can get the room to store them.

@Joecr
I think that’s the 250GB HDD.

Great! My 256 mb MU isn’t quite big enough for all of my game saves.

Or not, sorry. Ignore my previous post.
I’m looking forward to this, since I’ve got a 16 GB USB stick. Should be enough for 1-2 games, maybe some DLC as well.

@SirRadG – You should as long as your profile is also on the flash drive and it is signed in to Xbox Live.

Grateful to have flash drives as an option when it comes to portable storage. Gonna make transferring things when I visit people that much easier!! Thanks!!

With this statement…

“Since performance on flash based USB storage is usually better, I highly recommend using flash based instead of spinning media like a hard drive…it’s just going to give you a MUCH better experience.”

My question is, can you install games to a USB flash drive instead of your Hard Drive… AND will the games run / load faster??

While I don’t have a need to use USB memory sticks with my 360 at the moment, this is a very useful and welcome feature. Well done Microsoft.

Great news, thanks to all who worked on this.

I understand that Microsoft wants to make money, and I can’t begrudge them for that. But I never understood why they just didn’t sell a $30/40 Hard Drive shell and allow folks to purchase their own Hard Drive for upgrades.

This way, you have a fair compromise for everyone–gamers get their larger drive sizes and option to procure the size of Hard Drive they want, and Microsoft still makes money off of Hard Drive sales. Win win, I would think…

…having said all this, it’s good they’re allowing USB flash use for their system. Kudos.

I’m with you, Jonah Falcon. I imagine that Microsoft’s E3 conference is going to be focused on two things: Project Natal, and a new Xbox 360 “Slim”.

Good questions above. I will reiterate:
1. Why 16 GB limit? I’m not complaining, just interested in the technical reasons guiding this threshold.
2. Will a game installed to flash run faster than a game installed to you hard drive? Has anyone at MS tested this? I will be testing that on April 6

Very welcome, as it is we are a 2 console family, so I keep my profile and the saved games for games I’m actively playing on my 512MB MU. But there’s nowhere near enough space on that 512MB for all my saved games and I’m down to about 30MB free so I have to be pretty miserly with game saves.

I think I have an 8GB USB Disk around somewhere that will fit the bill nicely.

I’m also hoping that this will allow me to make a backup copy of the data on the new USB Disk, I’d expect that there is protection in place to keep people from modifying the contents of the disk to prevent cheating but even if I can just copy the contents over as an unreadable file (or disk image maybe) I’ll have some option in case my USB disk is lost or damaged.

Of course what we’d like to see in the future is USB HDD support to augment the built in HDD, of course I don’t really expect that as I’m sure that profit margins of the add on & upgrade HDD units help the bottom like of the Xbox division pretty significantly.

Happy to see the rumor is true. I just hope it supports game installs.

Seriously. Why the 16GB cap? Sony got it right when they allowed us to us any HDD we want.

This. This is what I want. Kudos to the team for getting it to work! Too bad about the 16GB cap, but gearing it towards allowing extra portable memory instead of a large hard drive isn’t the worst thing that could happen.

This is excellent, but it’s typical I find out about it the week after I ‘upgrade’ my two 64MB MUs to a 512MB

It’s gonna be really handy for all the multiple xbox families, and looking forward to what else is in the update!

I like how major nelson pretends this is “news.” Everybody knew about this a month ago and has been commenting nonstop. With all the problems the Xbox has, it’s a mystery why they are working on this “feature.” I won’t be using it. And they are keeping the limit at 16GB because they still want you to purchase their overpriced hard drives. No other reason.

you knoe why M$ only made it 16gb per usb because they want you to still Buy there over priced 250gb HHD that come out soon see its just M$ trying to make an extra Buck.

Question:
It caps a 2 USB sticks correct? Does that mean I can attach 2 MU’s and 2 USB sticks, allowing all 4 people to have their gamertag on a separate device, and still all be able to play local? Without having to copy tags all over the place?

I sure hope so! I don’t have a problem with storage, as my house has 5 hard drives floating around, but the ability to have 4 gamertags able to hop around all the 360′s with no gamertag copying is very very exciting.

They bilked me out of 50 bucks for that darn 512 MB memory card. Jerks. This could have been supported at launch, but instead they decided to milk us for as much as possible first.

Sure would have been nice to be able to use any size drive (You know like the competition allows). With the crazy prices MS charges for the larger drives, its no surprise they didn’t allow it. Another case of MS being greedy IMO. That said this is better than nothing.

That’s a great news. Everyone asked for Microsoft to open the storage. Good step forward !

only up to 16?

Early April Fool’s Joke?

@Wulf684

You must have missed the press release about the 250GB HDD for the Xbox 360.

http://majornelson.com/archive/2010/03/23/xbox-360-250-gb-hard-drive-now-available.aspx

Hi!
It is nice that Xbox 360 is giving us more possibility of choice.
Can you please make a USB to xbox live chat so We don’t need to make our wireless controller wired, but instead we can have option to connect any microphone and headset directly to console?
For instance if I have a pc headset I’d be able to conect it directly to this mic in and chat out on a usb, like on the ps3?

It’s official! But just up to 16GB…

I imagine the 16 GB cap is so it doesn’t affect sales of their hard drives, especially as they’ve only just announced the 250 GB one as a standalone item. Notice how nothing has been confirmed about being able to copy games to the USB stick as an alternative to the hard drive. Microsoft know what they’re doing.

Can we save DLC to these? What about Games on Demand? That’s what we really need, not game saves.

I was hoping this would be cleared up in the official press release.

Why are you guys suggesting that a hard drive with 293GB of free space is the new 250GB drive? That makes no sense.

Yes, yes, we know why they’re capping the size of them, it’s not rocket science.

At least I’ll be able to have a seperate drive for the wife to store her Lips tracks on and another on which I’ll be able to store old DLC. This has actually given my 20gb HDD a new lease of life.

So while they’re capping the size available, they’re also extending the life of my HDD thus losing out on a sale of probably a 250GB Xbox HDD for the forseeable future.

Can we use the “backside” USB? Or we must use the frontal USB ports?

Thank you again!

Is the 16GB arbitrary? Or is there a reason its limited?

The 16 gig cap really does seem like a punch to the kidneys to your customers.

I want a 293GB (320GB) HDD.

Quick, someone grab that dev HDD, extract the SS.bin & upload it for us all to use.
& for bunus points, put the HDD back without anyone noticing

Ringo:

It has to be arbitrary. The system can obviously address a higher range of space just evidenced by the hard drives it has used to date. So there should be no reason why it wouldn’t be able to see higher than 16GB off the USB ports.

It appears in the screenshots posted that we’ll be able to tag a bunch of items to copy, move or delete all at once. If true I think that’d be my favourite feature of the update as managing items now (one at a time) is really tedious.

Thank you, looking forward to the new features (I might actually take the 2GB Forza LCE USB drive out of the packaging now).

This will be great for Rockband content and game installs.

epic! this is definitly something that rocks. way better that the limited memory cards.

Major how is Microsoft working on making the usb device so it can’t be exploited ? I’m just curious to see if measure are being put in place from day one, I’m going to assume this “one time only” format will have something to do with it and something will be in the reserved space

“The 16 gig cap really does seem like a punch to the kidneys to your customers.” – LOL. Yeah, they should have stuck with charging £30 for a 512 MB proprietary memory unit instead. Allowing people to use any 16 GB memory stick that costs half that price but offers 32 times the storage is a real kidney punch!! Some people are never satisfied. I wonder how long it’ll take before the star rating is down to 1 or 2 stars again? flol.

thanks major N!

Hooray! Can’t wait to try this out and see what else the Spring update addresses.

Cool.

I wonder if DLC will be able to be copied and transfered in this way and if there will be some sort of block in place so people can’t share it for free or sell it.

Wonderful news!

Way to move in the direction of consumer friendliness and openness. Expensive storage space is one of the major flaws in the Xbox’s digital content strategy. By opening up sub-16GB flash USB solution (especially for Arcade users), you help alleviate that but also maintain the lucrative hard drive strategy.

Hats off! Great move!!! I’m very happy with this…

(sorry if I missed an earlier post)
Point of clarity:
Does the formatting tool allocate 16,000,000,000 bytes (16*10^9) or 17,179,869,184 bytes (16*2^30)?

Great another island of data for my Saved Games. How about a Microsoft approved Save Game backup utility so when my save game device dies or is lost I don’t loose everything. I like the choices of MU, HDD, & now Ext USB but it’s still a single data location where the save games are located and no backups exist.

How about an online feature that’s part of the Live service. Gold members can sync their Save Games to the online servers and if their MU or HDD dies, they can get them back again. Auto sync the data once a week? I’m a launch day 360 owner and all my saved games are on a 512mb MU that’s about half full. On the grand scope of things that’s not a lot of data to store online for me as a paying Gold member.

Just a thought, thanks for the new Ext USB support, it’s a good idea too.

Silly to limit it to 16GB, but at least now we can expand our memory without putting down unjustified costs towards proprietary Xbox 360 hard drives.

Very nice move… I’ll be using my own flash USB drive thank you… I don’t want to spend $79.99 for a 16GB official MS Xbox/SanDisk drive.

That would be the cost right? Usual MS over markup of media?

So, y’know how six months ago third party memory units were banned under the notion that it was too easy to modify the files for people cheating, and not at all about trying to sell more memory cards (in retrospect, clear out the existing stock)?

And you know how this clearly directly contradicts that?

What’s up with that.

Still, good news overall, even though the 16 gig limit is arbitrary, and the (over) price of the hard drives is still the critical issue.

Thanks

At Matthew M G

Exactly, just sell a cradle already so we can put whatever size drive in that we want. Sell it for a reasonable price (all it would be is a plastic shell with a few wires, who are we kidding), and let users decide what size drive we want. Microsoft makes money on essentially just some plastic (which would probably just cost them cents to make, and sell for like 40 dollars, so essentially all profit on their part), and users finally get the storage we need at a reasonable price. Win win for both sides. I would for sure buy more games, movies and content if I actually had room to put it all.

Sure, once they unlocked the hard drive, savvy users would probably just crack open their current HDD modules and plop in their own HDDs, but Joe average probably wouldn’t. I hope when the rumoured Slim 360 comes out, that they actually do exactly what Sony did. That would make me happy, as my water cooled 360 sometimes RROD’s (turn off the pump, let the GPU heat up a bit, and she’s good for another 6 months), and I wouldn’t mind a better quality console.

Question: when you say “two devices”, do you mean “two USB devices”? Can I plug in two MUs and two USB devices at the same time, for a total of four pieces of removable media at once?

The reason I’m asking is, we have an XB360 at the office, and we play a lot of Rock Band on it. But a bunch of us have our own XBoxes at home too. Right now, only two of us can use our home identities on the office XBox at once, because there are only two MU slots. If we can use two MUs and two USB devices at the same time, that would let all four of us plug our profiles in at once, which is perfect for Rock Band.

(For the same reason: please try to talk the engineers into bumping the limit up to four. You can have four controllers, you can have four profiles logged in at once, please let each person have their own USB storage to use so this all gets simpler.)

God this is so awesome

Glad to hear the news Major but gotta say I am a bit dissapointed by the limitations you guys are setting (bummer!!) .

16GB limit on Flash due to the tech limit? That’s rather unusual as I have seen a fair share of USB flash drives in the 32GB range, up to 128GB.

And of course limiting the number of devices that can be attached is yet another crazy move. good to hear I can have a system with 32GB of Flash, but oh sweet would it be to have one with much more storage… oh wait, you guys sell an overpriced HDD for 250GB? I see…

My guess on the reason for the 16GB limit is, look at how it’s going to work. The individual files you store aren’t going to show up as individual files when you plug it into a PC — that would make both piracy (copying data) and cheating (patching content) waaaay too easy. Instead, there’s almost certainly going to be one big complicated file with all sorts of cryptography on it, so tweaking just one bit in the file renders the whole thing corrupted.

On the one hand, powerful as the XB360 is, asking it to do too much cryptography transparently under the hood would have an impact on performance. And on the other hand, the bigger the file is, the more likely a random error (eg. due to hardware) would creep into it, destroying all your data. It’s easy to imagine these are the reasons for the limits, and not some attempt to protect hard-drive sales. So it’s still based on practices people often don’t care for (strong DRM and extremely closed data formats), but not necessarily the “we must protect hard drive sales” practice people are assuming.

Hmmm that’s just fine, but still not enought to install Blue Dragon on it as it requiers 19GB LOL! Not that you want to install that on you flash drive but I though it’s funny to mention it.

Chop!!

Major! This is the best news I have heard in a very long time. It’s about time that this has been added. Very nice thank you!

@Doug DeJulio, i think it’s pretty obvious he’s talking about a max of 2 USB devices.

This is good news…

Is the storage then tied to that specific console or are you allowed to float the storage between consoles easily without having to reinstall and such?

One of my major disappointments for the game installs was that when I go to another 360 the installed game won’t work on that console.

It would be an even better experience if you didn’t have an arbitrary 16GB cap on it just so you can continue to sell hard drives for 8X more than market value.

with most things that needed USB ports i.e. rock band and guitar hero going wireless the USB ports are a bit useless till now. I wouldn’t say that hte memory cards or use less since some of us might need to use the USB still for charging our controllers to using a USB keyboard. Now the real question is will the USB be used for game saves or for your profile or both. I myself like to still use my memory card which is 512 for jsut my profile and a few game saves and the 16 gig flash for a way to transport bigger files i.e. videos or more game saves.

I will make files transfer better al carte from say my 120 to my 250 HDD instead of having to re-download everything via Account Management. But over all using USB flash drive which everyone should have at least one is more accessible and more universal than a memory card. Now Microsoft is getting rid of one of their first party accessory and giving it all to 3rd parties, though there is a partnership with San Disc. Over all its a win win for both sides, I just hope the San Disc flash drive won’t be 4-50 bucks but like typical flash drives in the 25-30 dollar price range.

Hey people!

I can assure you that the “Sandisk” flash for Xbox 360 will be out (at least in Europe) at 11/5/2010. I don’t know how much it will cost, but I have seen a foto and a date confirmation!

Awesome first step. Next step that I’m excited for is when I can hook up a 1 or 2 TB external hard drive to my 360 and install all my 100+ games to it! …so excited for when that update comes one day soon!!

Thank you. This is good news. I wont need to buy that new HDD after all.

Ew, only 16 GB? Horrible.

Of course, like others, I believe it’s due to the hard drives they want to sell. lol.

so can we use this to copy our profiles now?
will there be any benefit to keeping the old memory units?

Always working to improve…it’s much appreciated. BTW, sorry about SU

I cant wait for this I’ve been using a 15gig first gen hard drive and i to cheap to buy a new one

I’m sorry but this is bullshit. The system obviously work but limiting it to 16gig is just a money grab so MS can sell more Hard Drive at crazy inflated prices. I’d love to upgrade my 20gig HD to one of the new ones but the prices are ridiculous

The fact that I can’t put in a larger HD and have multiple 16gig partitions is also just silly.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than we have now and IDK about you, I didn’t think we’d ever get USB storage.

Now let’s work on getting MP3 support?

2 things;
I hope Ill be able to transfer ALL saved games to my HDD, also the ones that couldnt be transferred before.
Why only 16GB? More FAT32 or NTFS support would be nice. I’m definitely gonna be using this, but not with flash memory, but with a HDD so its sad to see Ill only be able to use 16GB.

Happy indeed!

People complaining about the size limit aren’t thinking about the performance issues.

As Larry hinted in his post, a flash based USB drive will perform *much* faster then a spinning external hard drive connected via USB.

If you plugged in say a 250GB external hard drive it would be really slow over USB 2.0, it’s just not that fast of a connection.

And you can already access movies / videos from your PC with your 360 anyways so just store the content there and view it on your Xbox.

This is an awesome feature, I can now move my girlfriends 100 KB borderlands save file to her 360

- CG

Datel

@XenoLair Have you every used a 4200/5400RPM drive over USB? It’s not pretty, not at all. Flash memory is quite fast, that’s the reason for the limit.

They don’t want non-technical users plugging in big external hard drives and then bitching that it makes their games take forever to load, or choppy because it’s trying to read/write to this USB hard drive all the time. It’d be a huge performance hit for the 360.

As for swapping in your own drives, yes it’s nice but remember the limitations people:

1) WIth the PS3 you can use whatever drive you like, HOWEVER that drive’s content is locked to that physical console. You CANNOT take that drive out, take it to your buddies house, put it in his PS3 and expect your data to work. Your only option would be to format the drive.

2) Microsoft really likes the fact that you can take your hard drive to another 360, sign in to Xbox Live, and play your games. This makes it easy to visit your friends and take along your save game and a new game to show them.

3) Yes there’s quite a markup on the Xbox hard drives, that’s not really debatable.

4) Now you don’t have to buy expensive memory units, you can use a 8GB USB key you can buy for $10

- D

What I would like from this is the ability to convert the memory slots into USB 2.0 ports for my memory card to go into. Which would free up some USB ports for me. Otherwise I’m going to need to get one or more USB hubs per Xbox.

I suppose they could sell a shell (hehe tongue twister) and you could add in your own drive, which would make it a 360 Hard Drive and thus allow it to go between Xbox’s, but then they wouldn’t make money.

And after all, Microsoft is a business trying to make money, not your friend from grade school who’ll bend over backwards to help you after you made a drunken bar bet and lost your car :\.

But also, if you could freely take the drive in and out of shell like that, then you could (theoretically) put it in a PC and pirate stuff off it, and Microsoft wouldn’t like that.

So if we got the drive shell, you’d wave goodbye to being able to take it to your friend’s house and show him new game saves and what not. It’d be locked in like the PS3 is.

- D

32GB wow… you kidding me right?

Greed.

LOL@”Greed”. It’s a free update that means you can use any USB stick as a memory unit up to 16 GB in size. Currently you are limited to proprietary memory units that have a maximum size of 512 MB. I predicted that this thread would be filled with the same old “we want everything for free, but even if you give us that we’ll moan cos it’s not something else” moaning bastards and I was right. Hahaha.

so cool

It’s certainly a step in the right direction as far as allowing users to use their preferred storage media goes. On the downside, it’s likely that this could also encourage hacks and piracy on the 360. I hope your tech crew already considered such a scenario.

From here, the next progression would be an alternative to the overpriced proprietary hard drives. It’s a sad case when I could simply upgrade my PS3′s HDD to 250GB for a fraction of what it would cost on the 360.

Major did say “FYI : The pics I have posted on Flickr of the USB support are from my dev kit. For those asking.” on his twitter at http://twitter.com/majornelson/status/11099880728 so that explains that his HDD is bigger then the 250 GB one that they have released. I guess he should have mentioned that before posting to save some of the questions.

Awesome News!

293gb free? Do Want.

Size limit ia not an issue as long as this is cheap removable USB flash Drives. How many do you need anyweay?

This is a blessing for 360, and this is something i really needed.

I only hope to see more usb ports in new XBOX360 Versions

Kind of cool I guess, but I dropped the bank on the 120 gig HDD back before NXE released and have plenty of space. Might be nice to just transport a flash drive to my friends houses instead of the HDD unit.

While we are on the topic of transporting memory units how about getting them to make it so that you can run games off the HDD on consoles other than the one they were installed on? Since you still have to have the disc this seems like a really stupid limitation to me.

Great news! I use the 512MB for my profile and game saves to move between consoles and it’s filling up. Like someone else here said, I hope there’s a way to copy all the game saves to the USB thumbdrive from the MU. Currently some games don’t give you the ability to move the game save from one device to another.

This is great news! Can’t wait, Major! I was thinking that I can put my profile and Rock Band DLC on an 8GB drive, then I can play them on any 360!

All we need now is Readyboost for the 360!!!

Thanks Major, this is great news. A step in the right direction.

It’s cool and about time, but why the 16gb restriction? Seems like a restriction just for the sake of selling overpriced 120 and 250gb hdd accessories.

This is very welcome news indeed. I have a couple spare flash drives that will be put to use once again. Giving the consumer options is a win-win for everybody. Glad to see this. Now, how about letting us use our own HDDs? Pretty please? I have a spare 500 gb external drive looking for a home. Heck, I may be OK with it even if you if you sell empty Xbox HDD shells for your proprietary connections at a reasonable price, and let us plug in our own 2.5″ HDDs. Then nobody is voiding any warranty, and the consumer has a better end experience!

I’m confused, never used a memory unit before so can anyone answer this – with this new update will you be able to use flash drive and hdd together like as one? Or do you got to switch your account onto one and use it

Hehe, and we will be able to see the LED flashing everytime it’s using the data! I love the flashing leds, and the Xbox 360 hasn’t got anyone

Good news. I just a 1GB and 2GB flash drive, but I might have to pick up one with some more memory. I just used my memory unit to hold my gamer profile. I know they could have opened up the 16GB limit to something larger, but one can only wait and hope. This is called a move in the right direction, Microsoft. Thank you.

Good news. Will be good to have my saves on an external thumb drive incase my xbox were to ever die . I have a 64MB mem card that i keep my profile on….was holding off buying one of the bigger cards unless something like this ever happened.

Also for those asking, “why the 16GB limit”, it is either a marketing strategy or a restirction of the system not allowing more than 16GB storage…..my guess would be a restriction on memory card storage (not including HDD’s obviously), but who knows

sorry, but imposing the artificial 16GB limit is ridiculous.

Indeed…that is a picture from my devkit. Sorry about the confusion!

Why only 16 GB?

@Gonzo345 I don’t see why not as I thought that was done by the drive itself to let you know when it was sending or receiving data. Which the following URL indicates is true. http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/844

Why 16GB?

good news

Larry, you don’t specifically mention if you can run full XBLA, XBLIG or Games On Demand off the USB drives?

will I be able to transfer saves for games that don’t allow copy or move?

Finally. I have been putting off downloading new demos and full games since my hard drive has been more than full for a year!

Good news!
I already own a 64MB MU, but 16GB sounds much better!

Can I use this to transfer my save files to a new HD instead of using a transfer cable?

this sounds pretty cool, although it sucks that if you hook up an USB hard drive your limited to only 16GB. at least now I can put a few MP3′s from my PC on one instead of ripping CD’s to my 360

Loose the limit and i might care, oh wait i still DONT.

Man, you people are really amazing. Is there anything you WON’T complain about??

Does this affect a device(500GB) already connected to my Xbox360 used just for Audio/Video. Getting things to play through the network is problematic at best. I don’t want to tie up both at the same time.

So… memory unit ports are now useful for what?

I don’t really understand the 16GB limit, but whatever. I’m just hoping that I’ll be able to transfer gamesaves/xbl arcade games via USB cable for whenever I buy my next Xbox. (I’d rather not do it 16GBs at a time)

So I’m guessing we can’t install games on USB.

The Gamernist movement :

I demmand Microsoft to give all users at least 1 FREE USB memory (16 Gb, not less) to every xbox 360 user no matter it’s gold or silver. Otherwise people will burn their 360s to ashes like bras in the late 60s.

Seriously, the update comes free and I’m sure nowadays everyone has at least a 6gb flash memory even if it came with the cereals and have captain crunch or barbie on it.

I dont have any memory cards so this will come handy when going to my friend’s house and the same works for them. We won’t have to retrieve our gamertags never ever again. Not to mention how useful it will be to keep backups on our computers of everything we purchased at the marketplace. Now it won’t be so painful if a new console appears and 360s content gets erased from the servers as time go on.

I see myself using an 8 Gb unit for common use stuff.

About the capping complains, God.. it’s like Queen’s song… You want it all and you want it NOW ! People should relax a bit. 16gb is better than none and note this is a first step. Who can tell if it will be upped in the future to match maximun file size for arcades wich is getting higher with time.

Microsoft sure made a lot of mistakes with a lot of their products but IMHO this isn’t one so I’d like to THANK Microsoft for this and last but not least to remember people that the man behind Major Nelson’s tag ins’t the ruler of everything xbox 360 related so he’s not the one to blame or to thank most of the stuff usually commented here.

Oh, and it was dead obvious he had a dev kit… it takes no rocket scientist to figure that out.

If there is someone wondering why I always write so much it’s cause I always read all the previous comments…I’m not sure if this makes any sense.

Cheers.

“I highly recommend using flash based instead of spinning media like a hard drive…it’s just going to give you a MUCH better experience.”

I disagree with this statement.

Only if somebody buys high end USB 2.0 flash drives, the data is non-contiguous and if MS screwed up the implementation of the SATA interface to the Xbox 360 2.5″ Hard Drive. Remember, USB Flash drives are not the same as $500 Intel SATA SSD drives.

A modern 5400 RPM 2.5″ drive has a sustained host to drive transfer rate of 97 Megabytes per second (http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/AAG/ENG/2879-701278.pdf). Sandisk’s extreme contour USB flash drives have a maximum READ speed of 25MBps and WRITE speed of 18MBps for an MSRP of $109 ($48 Street Price) for the 16 GB device. (http://www.sandisk.com/products/computing-products/sandisk-extreme-cruzer-contour-usb-flash-drive)
Cheaper flash drives have even slower transfer rates.
Even with deluxe USB 2.0 flash drives, the transfer rate for contiguous data is approximately 1/4 that of a 5400 RPM 2.5″ SATA notebook drive.

For things like cached game DVD’s, downloaded movies and music, I really doubt that a USB flash disk would have much, if any advantage over a 5400 RPM 2.5″ SATA drive. I would even say that a spinning disk drive would be faster since the data should be relatively contiguous.

@bubbabear: I don’t think the Major is comparing usb flash drive to the 360′s HDD. He’s comparing a usb flash drive to a usb hdd. (i.e. external hdd in an enclosure)

The drives are being connected by USB, which will most likely negate any speed advantage either way.

BubbaBear: Is there anyway to use SATA SSD drives as if they were flash, to get the speed boost that way? If you get an enclosure with hardware RAID, would the 360 see it and perform the format? I know this needs an educated guess, but that would allow “perhaps” for the speed of SSD. Granted…we would still be capped at 16 GB, but that isn’t the point. SPEED is the point. Major: Any opinion on this…since I have been banging the SSD gong on this site an others for many a moon

It’s limited to 16GB so they can still sell hard drives with insane mark ups.

@AMT, don’t waste your money or your time thinking about it. You’re not going to gain much speed. Besides, where would you see it? Loading a saved game which takes a second as it is?

@Bubba Well said. My ancient USB 2.0 250GB external hard drive can read data much faster than my 4GB SanDisk Cruzer. 35MB/s versus 15 MB/s, respectively.

@P00K Isn’t a USB flash drive also connected via USB? USB 2.0 can ideally handle speeds up to 60MB/s

That said, I am happy to see the 360 FINALLY get USB drive support! The 16GB cap kinda sucks but I already picked up a 120GB refurb from EB ($80cdn!) so I’m good there. I will basically use this to actually use my profile when I use my family’s 360′s.

desde chile lo esperamos con ansias

Hey McCaleJK. The speed I am thinking about is not saved game loads, but actual games installed to SSD. So the whole game would be loaded from the SSD in this case via USB. As if you installed it to the HDD. So theoretically all loads would be quicker as are the speed gains you see when comparing the CD vs. the HDD. If SSD was an option, then even quicker loads would be realized. However, as some have mentioned, the USB might limit speed gains even if Flash was quicker, or if you could use an enclosure with SSDs that has a USB option which some do. However, again, the USB is the limiting factor here…maybe. This still gives the option of SSDs in place of the current hdd. Major Nelson actually mentioned this briefly in a podcast months and months ago…that the hardware team let him test out a SSD option. Not sure if he ever commented on the benefits or not. However, SSD won’t be an option from Microsoft because of the expense. However, giving us the option would be nice.

any thing else in the update worth mentioning?
offline divx support?
mkv support?
internet browser?

im greedy

i want moar

@ZaZeeMan: Yes, that was my point. It sounded like he was comparing a usb-connected flash drive to a sata-connected hdd… I don’t think that’s what major intended. Rather I think he was saying he prefers usb-connected flash to usb-connected hdd.

just one question major is there any way we can hook are 120gb or 20gb through usb since i have a 250gb also but just wondering or is it not possible

It’s great to hear that this is confirmed to be coming Major.

This takes away one more promotional bullet point from the competition’s console. This change should also ensure more DLC & Games on Demand purchases on the system(if supported). I know I will be giving those Games on Demand offers on the console a second look as I have only bought two Xbox Original titles up to now during sales(Fable & Halo: CE), and made all my other GoD purchases through Games for Windows LIVE. Also, I can now choose to keep some of my Zune video marketplace purchases on the console’s extra storage options, instead of on my PC HDD and always using the streaming option(once again – if supported). Awesome work Xbox team on making this an option.

@ Mcmax3000 and others. I am confident there is a technical reason that the Xbox 360 can only use up to 16GB of USB storage for each connected devise. Hopefully, the additional storage size limit will be increased in the future as sufficiently possible to maybe even “DEV KIT” sizes.

Also, as others have pointed out from a business perspective, if there was not a size limit of 16GB for whatever possible technical reason, there would not be much reason to still purchase the surprisingly cheap(compared to the initial price of the 20 & 120GB standalone drives at launch) & easily portable 250 GB harddrive for $130 US?

The ability to copy/move multiple selections at once? Finally!

And I just noticed Friday’s Games for Windows LIVE deal through your Twitter. Viva Pinata for $5.00?! Glad I did not buy it at the launch discounted price of $10, cause 5 bucks is an outrageous steal for that addicting game. I guess I will forgo trying to find the retail box version for $10 to 15.

Considering you’re bigging up flash storage, how about releasing an affordable 250GB SSD drive? Imagine the performance!

Its about time they allowed USB drives. I had heard if you have a “jtag hack” Xbox360 this was possible- but now its nice that us with legitimate xbox’s can use the USB. It’s unfortunate but understandable that the limit to storage is 16GB. It is gong to be awesome to be able to rip your game to you USB drive, as the transfer speeds will be much faster than the 5400rpm xbox360 hard drive.

Installing and playing a game off your USB drive should increase load times significantly.

Thank you so much for adding USB support for Xbox. I’ve been running low on memory. My 8GB stick will do the trick. Actually, I’m going to go buy a 16GB real cheap at Micro Center.

The USB connectivity is indeed the big bottleneck.

Your drive can be the fastest the SSD possible but going over USB there’s only so fast it can go.

Even worse some games are constantly reading and writing which can slow some USB devices down even further, especially 4200RPM Hard Drives.

So in some cases USB is speedy, in others it’s slow as hell. The usual slow culprits are slower spinning hard drives.

And since the majority of Xbox 360 gamers are just that, gamers, and not iT techs, they wouldn’t be aware of this. They’d run out to Best Buy, grab the biggest drive they could afford and throw it into an enclosure.

Then they’d get home and wonder why it was running slowly, blame Microsoft, call 1-888-4MYXBOX and complain, or go on the forums and bitch .

Limiting it to 16GB means most people will use USB keys which are cheaper to afford and for the most part faster.

And if you do happen to use a bigger drive, it will partition it. When you plug it into your PC or Mac you’ll see a partition that is 16GB smaller then the Xbox 360 partition, you can drag all the music and video you want onto this drive and it will be readable by the xbox.

The 16GB partition will act just like a Xbox Memory Unit and can have games and things put on it.

- D

Just small enough(16GB) to make us still need to buy M$’s overpriced HDD’s

So I can FINALLY take my profile and arcade games to a friend’s house? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhsome!

limited to 16gig eh?
funnily enough, MS just put their 250GB drives on sale…

Uhh why all the whining about the 16GB size limit?? There’s no sense to whine just for the sake of whining, you know.

It’s a THUMB Drive people! How big could you possibly want it to be?
They don’t come much bigger than a 120GB Xbox 360 HDD, and at those sizes they literally cost a small fortune! Definitely pricier than buying THREE 120GB HDD’s!!!

You see any “limit” as a threat and demand more more more, but you’re forgetting to think about cost! For the price of any thumb drive larger than 16GB you might as well buy an HDD instead!

As you see, the reason behind the limit is likely because it’s simply not economical to have anything larger! A 250GB Xbox HDD = $120. A 256GB Flash Drive = (brace yourself…) $1100! The price of thumb drives are shockingly expensive even when compared to Microsoft’s storage options, and especially when you get over 16GB!

Settle down and be happy with what we’re getting! 16GB is a ginormicous leap over the 512MB MU’s we were previously limited to! I’d be willing to bet that most of the complainers don’t have even a 16GB thumb drive (guess what, they’re expensive too)!

@DHX: Well spoken! People forget one thing, and why would you need more than 2 * 16.GB drives at once in addition to their 120.GB +/- HD?

32.GB, 64.GB, 128.GB ++ Flash drives is getting quite expensive compared to a 16.GB Flash, and a official 250.GB HD would be cheaper. I guess several people here dont even know how much 16.GB is, and dont even know that you can swap drives. How many GB of DLC do you really have?

Since you can use any 16.GB Flashdrive from any brand, i dont see any problem. I only need 2 or 3 to backup my DLC, or maybe more if arcade games can be copied to flash too.

Those who can see the whole picture with this, would never complain about 16.GB limit.

I will add to this that 16.GB is a big step for 360, and it was my most wanted feature. I can finally make more room on my 120.GB HD so i can install more retail games to HD. I used to have up to 13 retail games at once on HD, and now i have 6 or so. I like to have many installed, because i often switch games and dont want to install every damn time. I bought nearly 60 games on LIVE, and 130 retail games on 360.

lol wouldnt that make it easier to mod games?

i mean you could go in on youre computer and change things inside the games file or add things or is there a security system for that?

@ Mr. Pibb: I think we have discussed the issue of installing games on the Flash, and it might not be quicker than the installed HDD. Time will tell, but the fastest current might be just installing on the HDD. Unless the SSD enclosure connected by USB works but still that will be limited by the 16GB limit and perhaps the USB transfer limitation. Time will tell. As has been said, allow us to use SSD in place of the current HDDs and we are golden. Case closed, speed increases, everyone is happy outside of those that can’t afford it.

After just buying a 120gb HDD. Hah it’s ok, I can get myself a 16GB device to sit in the back.

So Major, is one of the “enhanced” memory management functions in this update going to include the ability to copy or move original Xbox gamesaves (and 360 gamesaves not previously copyable/moveable)? I just recently got the FFXIII 360 and was transferring gamesaves from my old Elite HDD using a 512MB MU (that I just got right before this update was announced, grrr thanks a lot MS!) and much to my surprise, I noticed that the only option available for my original Xbox gamesaves was “Delete”. I’d like to finish up Fable:TLC on my new 360, but I’d really rather not have to swap HDDs just to do it if I didn’t need to.
—
Oh btw, for those wondering, 16GB USB Flash drives are currently going for around $30-40 on average on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=16GB+USB

Lexar used to be among the most expensive flash drives, but nowadays they are cheaper than Sandisk and maybe even Kingston. The most reliable flash drives is Lexar, Kingston and Sandisk, and probably others.
Remember that some nonane brands, or cheap shit brands frequently gets read and write errors on flash and you might lose everything. Buy a reliable brand to make safe backups. You will regret later for not buying as proper flash instead.

Oooh no I can use my big USB hard drive…oh wait. Never mind. Ill be bothered when the 16GB limits gone which will probably be when M$ stop making so much money on there proprietary hard drives.

Well this at least lets the ARCADE Console users have a better way to save games.
This is a step in a positive direction. Now Arcade units can have decent storage for save games and some videos.

I lol’ed at the comment that MS should give all users a free 1GB drive. ROFL XD Holy crap I’m crying in laughter!!

We will be able to install games to the USB and play from them, right?

@Rhaxx I think so, but it may be a slower loading than having them installed on the HDD. Not certain however.

Any word of anything else in the spring update?

So, Major, give us a good excuse why it’s only up to 16gb per drive for two drives.

We all know it’s so microsoft can sell it’s ridiculously priced HDDs, but I’m just curious what the official spin on this is.

I’d love to bring my Xbox Originals with me in a USB drive xD

GTA San Andreas & Halo.

Esperando actualizacion desde Mexico. Saludos a todos. ^o^

About time!!

One thing I would like to know, how big is Major Nelsons hard drive as it is showing 298gb free space. I thought the largest HD available was the 250gb unless you are using a modded xbox?

Just a thought….

Just read the comments on the flickr page ><

Dev kit hdd ftw!!!

ATTENTION: I am going to give the SSD and enclosure a shot. The SSD has a read of about 230 mb/s and write of 135 mb/s. Plus, the access will blow 360 HDD out of the water. The only question is will the USB limit the speed any.

According to the recent podcast, USB HDDs are usuable. Thus, my SSD and enclosure “should” work. The only question is speed. I will be testing and hopefully speed will be evident with quicker loading.

This may give me the option to have two game installs on the drive (the two that I am playing at the time (if game installs is allowed)) plus game saves, and profile all on the SSD drive.

“Access time” that is. (Should be quicker)

Way better than before, but there should have been way beyond 16GB. Whatever the max FAT32 or NTFS can do (whatever XBOX is using). I mean, Microsoft should really encourage unlimited storage. Making money on software, not proprietary hard drives. My 120GB constantly fills up from installs (and I only install half the games I pop in). The 250GB would make life a little bit better, but still I’d be deleting at least once a month. I want to be able to hook up 2TB+.

I don’t even do anything fancy like buy HD movies or Games on Demand. No way will I even touch that stuff while I feel my neck constrained on the GB freeway.

I guess receiving this update so soon before the closure of Live for the original Xbox means we won’t be seeing the new “features and experiences that harness the full power of Xbox 360″ for some time yet.

@ SpaceNinjaDino, me too. I just want to buy another 2TB hard drive (external USB) and connect it to my 360. …install all my games to it. If it means formatting it in some way that I could never use it with my Mac then so be it – I just want to install all my games to one nice big drive.

AWESOME!!! Been wanting support like this since day 1!!! It’s a little disappointing that it is limited to only 2 16GB devices, but that is a lot better than nothing. Can’t wait to almost triple the amount of space on my Xbox. Finally I don’t have to delete things to make room or go pay for one of those overpriced drives to replace my 20GB one. Good job MS.

First I’d like to say, ‘Thank you!’

Secondly, to everyone complaining about the limitations, or the fact that MS is charging exorbitant prices for hardware accessories, um… they’re a company. Their purpose is to make money. Do I agree that a wireless network adapter for a console should cost more than one that can be used with a more powerful PC? Of course not. But again, it’s a business.

This is going to make migrating a ton of Rock Band DLC from a 20GB to a 60GB so much easier. And no transfer cable needed. Awesome!

Technical Questions:
1) Do we know yet if the USB devices in question will have to be formatted with FAT32, or can we use an existing NTFS formatted device? (This question comes from the fact that to view .AVIs, .JPGs, etc. from an external USB device, it must be formatted with FAT32. Or at least it was a year or so ago.)

2) Even if the user is limited to using only 2 USB sticks at a time, can they be attached to a USB hub for use? (Network Adapter, Live Vision Camera, Play & Charge, Rock Band 1 Guitar, USB Cooling Unit (not Intercooler), USB Keyboard, USB Stick 01, USB Stick 02 = way more than the 3 USB ports available on the Xbox.

3) Can we move Games On Demand items to the USB Stick?

4) Can we move videos purchased through the Video Marketplace now Zune Marketplace to the USB Stick?

5) Will games be able to access this while in play? For example, moving most of my Rock Band DLC onto a stick, and have it plugged in while playing.

Thanks!

Very nice.

This is awesome. I have lost 2 360′s to RROD, each one about a year apart. Lost all my save games and had to start over. Most of the games that I had put alot of time into, I never restarted. I didn’t want to pay 50 bucks for a 360 memory card and now I don’t have to, or worry about ever losing my save games again. Thank you Micorsoft.

this is very good

WOW !! USB flash memory … that’s like … from the future … right? We can only dream of having regular HDD support, maybe in 2027?

What a joke.

@ Glasswalker33

The 360 uses the FATX file system.

It can not be read by operating system by conventional means. You have to use a program such as ‘Xplorer360′ to view the contents of a FATX device in Windows.

Can you plug these in the back USB port or is that not recommended? Will game installs run off them be better or worse than the attached hard drive?

@ K1LLER HORNET
That’s not really the way I was looking at it. I’m not wanting to view the 360 contents on a PC. From what you’re saying though, it sounds like the stick will end up having at least two partitions on it (is that even possible?), one that’s FATX that only the 360 can get into, and the other would be FAT32 or NTFS, whichever I normally use.

Is that closer to the target?

Thanks!

I would really like to know more about this update. Is this an update that’s going to require a hard drive to install in the first place? Or should more recent models be able to handle this update without a hard drive. We have a Pro console, bought about 9 months ago (in New Zealand) but we don’t have the hard drive anymore – just my crappy 64MB MU. Please tell me we can haz this update anyway??

You should be good to go Kit! Updates (I think) is on the system not HDD or MU. Basically it is installed on internal memory that is hidden. Plus, you will be able to have USB FLash as a boost to your MU soon.

I wasn’t too far off I guessed $79.99 for 16GB USB in an earlier post here.

http://gear.ign.com/articles/108/1080566p1.html

Looks to be $69.99 for an official MS Xbox 360 16GB USB Drive.

MS just never seems to learn.

Oh, and when NXE was announced it was mentioned that this technology would enable MS to roll out more frequent updates to us… not 2 a year. That really hasn’t happened yet, now has it?

Any chance of anything else coming in this Spring update, or will we have to wait till Fall/Winter for another update? More than 100 on our friends list, ability to organize friends/notes?

Would be nice to get more regular updates.

ey u can give me the update ???

@OS Perry – You seem shocked they haven’t made good on their “more frequent updates” promise of NXE. Remember how they also promised Avatars were going to reinvent the social gaming paradigm on the 360 by allowing developers to give us Avatar awards and by having games which utilize our Avatars?

Haven’t seen much of that yet, either. There’s what? Six games, maybe, which give avatar awards and, as far as I know, only one actual RETAIL game which allows us to use our Avatars (Sonic and SEGA All Star Racing), and only a handful of XBLA games which use them. They completely undermined avatar awards by making the Avatar Marketplace. Why would devs want to give away Avatar swag when they could try to make us PAY for it?

I also remember how they said NXE was going to optimize screen space and allow them to minimize or cut down on advertising. Yeah, I KNEW those two were lies. Almost everything they promised with NXE has been completely unrealized or ignored.

awesome cant wait, my 20 gig is full

Now we just need a f-ing optional web browser. Before you internet psychos jump all over me for saying this, just back off for a moment: A> I did say optional, so you wouldn’t have to install it. B> If you ever travel and get stuck in motels and hotels, you’ll know that in many places you have to “Accept” an agreement before the system lets you online. All I want here is a simple web browser that would let me accept the stupid ToS at a motel through my 360 so that I can get online and play.

I stay in towns that are so small that they don’t even have a bowling alley. I can only go out to the bars so many times before that gets old. When I am out of town I get a good chance to catch up on a lot of games. The 360 is seriously lacking a simple browser.

hello major im wondering i have the new slim 360 with 250 gig hdd and i only got agout 50gb space left, is the cap on usb memory going to be lifted or increased any time soon as u will loose sales from me soon and obviously if my 250gb is nearly full then i will be buying some usb sticks soon but they wont last me long either need more room lol