USB storage is officially coming soon to the Xbox 360, allowing players to download, save and install games to third-party flash drives.
Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb, Xbox Live's director of programming, confirmed a rumor that USB storage will be enabled through a system update on April 6. Hryb also said that external hard drives will work, but he advised against spinning hard drives anyway due to their slower speed.
Players will have to partition a section of their hard drives when first inserting them into the console. Only 16 GB may be used for Xbox 360 storage, so even if you have a flash drive that's larger than 16 GB, you won't be able to use more than that amount on the console. The rest can still be used elsewhere. Flash drives must hold at least 1 GB, and players can connect up to two drives at a time, allowing 32 GB of expanded storage.
The announcement effectively marks the end of Microsoft's external memory unit business. You can still buy a 512 MB memory unit specifically for the Xbox 360, but at $30 each, you're better off with an 8 GB or 16 GB USB drive for the same price. Microsoft is partnering with SanDisk to release an official USB flash drive, which will be pre-configured and ready to store data out of the box. I'm guessing these branded drives will replace memory units on store shelves.
Paired with the announcement of a 250 GB hard drive for the Xbox 360 -- and the price drops on smaller drives that will likely follow -- storage options are getting a lot less volatile for Xbox 360 owners. With unofficial memory card maker Datel recently suing Microsoft for anticompetitive practices, after Datel's own drives were blocked from the console, I don't think this new functionality from Microsoft is a coincidence.
