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Joystiq has posted a news piece that, while officially unconfirmed by Microsoft, seems to be utterly compelling. The gaming blog got their hands on documentation penned by “a senior software development engineer at Microsoft” and “subsequently confirmed with two separate sources” that non-Microsoft-branded USB mass storage device support, via firmware update, is coming to Xbox 360 this spring. What does this mean for consumers? Those of you with Arcade models (i.e. no hard drive) or with original Pro models (only 20 GB) will be able to attach up to two solid-state USB memory devices into the Xbox 360 and achieve a maximum of 32 GB of extra storage space. Apparently, Microsoft is getting out of the memory unit game, but is still protecting its lucrative HDD monopoly. Even though the Xbox 360 has three USB ports, only two of them will be able to be used for augmenting your storage space. Moreover, only 16 GB of space can be used from any one unit (even if it is far larger). While this certainly goes a long way toward making room and helping with portability of big files, it won’t entirely supplant the demand for large HDD units. Tying this back into the Xbox 360 ‘Slim’ rumor from yesterday, it’s possible that Microsoft could get away with shoehorning a 20 GB or 60GB internal HDD into such a model, allowing users to increase storage through their own USB drives, making the chassis profile for the unconfirmed system far smaller and keeping the production costs down substantially.
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