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Xbox 360 to get (gimped) USB storage support
deadonthestreet
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Because this doesn't deserve to be only in the lets-talk-about-what-GAF-is-talking-about megathread,
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/18/xbox-360-gaining-usb-storage-support-in-2010-update/
So, up to 16 gigs on a USB storage device. This is great news for us Arcade owners who want to play some XBLA games or maybe a demo. We no longer have to spend over $100 for a hard drive. On the downside the 16 gig limit blows and effectively limits your ability to install games. Still, overall a net positive.
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/18/xbox-360-gaining-usb-storage-support-in-2010-update/
According to the document, the USB mass storage device must be at least 1GB and the system will do a compatibility check. "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."
So, up to 16 gigs on a USB storage device. This is great news for us Arcade owners who want to play some XBLA games or maybe a demo. We no longer have to spend over $100 for a hard drive. On the downside the 16 gig limit blows and effectively limits your ability to install games. Still, overall a net positive.
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I take offense to this. We also talk about pie.
Why?
How are they going to sell their own drives then?
This provides quite a tidy solution for both them (MS) and consumers.
I guess they could lower the prices on their own drives?
Sometimes it benefits a company to take a short term financial loss to improve customer relations and do something nice for people.
This is good news for Pro owners who never felt like paying crazy prices to upgrade from their "20GB" HDDs.
Yes, for only $80 you can nearly triple your hard drive space. (Cost of two 16gig memory sticks, or the cheapest HDs I could find, which you can only use 16gigs of per drive)
Or for $120 you can pentuple it with an overpriced MS HD.
Yeah, but the difference is a year from now, those 16 GB sticks will cost half what they do now, while the MS hard drives will still be the same price.
That wasn't being nice, that was not wanting to face a class action lawsuit that they were guaranteed to lose.
Extending the warranty for something that was creating a 30%+ failure rate of your system isn't exactly what I'd call doing something nice for people.
Its called covering your ass before a class action lawsuit occurs.
edit: wow, beaten barely. wierd.
It's almost like being a drug addict. To begin recovery, you've gotta hit rock bottom first.
My first thought was "Well now it'll be even easier to do things like mod guns in Borderlands."
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it will in some way prevent the ability to transfer files from PC to xbox via the memory stick. Isn't a 512Mb partition complete overkill for a removable storage device? I've never really looked closely at what OSX or Windows take off a memory dongle but I can't imagine it's anywhere near that much considering some memory sticks aren't even that big.
Still, it is nice to know that I'll be able to use one of the dozens of free USB memory sticks I have lying around as removable storage for my xbox should I need it rather than those ridiculously overpriced proprietary memory cards.
For fuck's sake, would it kill them to let you throw your profile on there too? My friend and I both bought 360s with a hard drive and no memory card, and we're sick of not being able to both be logged into our accounts when we hang out and play Rock Band and whatnot.
Exactly the situation I'm in.
I could buy half a new 360 for what a 120 gig drive costs.
edit: and god damn, they need to make profiles easier to make portable.
I assume it probably has something to do with people pulling their accounts apart and reverse engineering it to add stuff to their account.
Even though it's not stated I think they will allow profile storage. If the reason this is happening is truly because of a new slim 360 with no memory card slots they almost have to include that option.
So do what I did, and grab a 64MB memory unit from ebay. I think I paid about $7 for a used one.
And yes, I would think profile storage would be allowed this way; since they're signed/hashed etc?
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/6059462/SanDisk-Cruzer-16GB-USB-Flash-Drive/Product.html
Not to mention not having to worry about moving parts if you use them to install games/Games on Demand.
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It should make it easier. Given that it has to work with existing software and everything, a USB drive should be functionally the same as a memory unit, so hopefully we won't need to buy memory units just to test every case anymore.
Yeah, it's a pretty huge win for people with 20GB/60GB hard drives. Especially since the USB drive prices will continue to come down.
If you are looking for a cheap replacement for the memory cards, maybe. For large storage, this is 'meh' news. USB flash drives would have to drop in price by half just to break even with the 120gig xbox 360 HDD and even then you would have your stuff stored on four memory sticks while you can only have two in at a time.
Goods news for XBLA titles and game saves, don't care news for game and movie downloads.
I'll give a damn when somebody comes out with a hack that allows you to plug in a real HDD that is separated into 16gig partitions and tricks the xbox into thinking they are each a single flash drive.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cykstfc
The article did say that full games could be saved onto the stick. You'd need the actual disc for verification purposes, much like it is done now. I don't see why DLC couldn't be saved onto the stick?
-Get a 16 gig stick or use one of my spare drives in a external enclosue
-Copy EVERYTHING on my HD to the stick
-Wipe the HD
-Copy back my profile, saved games, any XBLA games I still play regularly, and any DLC for games I play regularly.
-Keep everything else on the thumb drive as backup, and so I have enough room on the main drive to install at least 1 game.
I think he's saying that 16GB only allows enough space for 2, maybe 3 game installs. Which ain't much, and for a price much higher (per install) than just upgrading to a 120GB HD.
However, I say that there are probably a lot of people for whom just having that little bit of extra space (16GB is a 26% increase over 60GB, and that's not taking into account the bit that MS claims on the 60GB hard drive for caching and what not) it's probably not a bad alternative to a costly upgrade. I'm sure there are a few other people like me who don't see the need to keep more than 8-10 game installs around, but then find themselves running out of space for shit like demos and XBLA games.
Not to rain on your parade, but you can pick up a used 60GB hard drive for about the same as a single 16GB stick (I paid $45 including shipping, on eBay). Probably a better option. Then you can just pick up a 1GB or 2GB stick (much cheaper) to back up saves and what not, if you like.
120GB hard drives are a bitch to find cheap, though, because of all the knockoffs from Hong Kong. 20GBs and 60GBs, however, don't have the knockoff problem and are cheap.
Thanks Microsoft!
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This is my exact plan, too. In my experience, most AAA high hype games these days punch in at 5-6 gigs.
So, can we plug in two 16 gig sticks for an extra 32 gigs of storage?
EDIT: Never mind. Answered.
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