USB Drive Support Coming to Xbox 360
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
A little late to the party MS, but good you finally caught up. A removable storage device will prove very useful.
Yea, but we're talkin' about Micro$oft here. They use every trick in the book to squeeze cash out of us XBoxers. The HDs are a horrible rip-off, I'd never buy one (and I really wish I'd got the Elite with the 120GB packed in, the money you save is rediculous - you actually get everything included at market value!) But the Memory Cards were just fuckin rediculous - $30 for 512mb of storage - what is this, 1998? Now for the same money users can get a 16GB flash drive and have much more flexibility with the system.Mornelithe said:
Yay for M$!!!, and right about time, I was just thinking on replacing my 20gb HDD for a 250gb (I didn't bought the 250 Elite, because I bought my Xbox from a friend for roughly 190 bucks on last november), but heavy thinking on this one, I don't have the money for a new HDD, but I have a couple of flash drives lying around with more than enough space... I don't know how or why, this will remind me of my PSOne days of having like 5 memory cards lying around and swapping them all the time...
I would ask why the hell it took so long, but I suspect I already know the answer.
Well, at least I don't have to worry about the ever smaller amount of memory space I have on my puny 20GB harddrive.
Still, why only 16GB?
Well, at least I don't have to worry about the ever smaller amount of memory space I have on my puny 20GB harddrive.
Still, why only 16GB?
Any news as to whether or not you can load game addons, and other DLC? i doubt it, but it would be nice.
I don't know 'bout the roadmap but is this the first step in fasing out this console?
I hope that the next step is to stop giving me a hard time streaming music from my NAS.
open source FTW
I hope that the next step is to stop giving me a hard time streaming music from my NAS.
open source FTW
Oh I doubt it... have you seen the Game Room that just opened? It's Microsoft's attempt to open a new revenue stream - by having players pay 50 cents each time they want to play a 1980's Atari game. These are really faithful ports/adaptations, but the cartridges can be had for 25 cents a piece as a church sale if you look hard enough, and the hardware isn't much worse. I think if anything they realized that no one was falling for the memory card scheme, and supposedly they are working on a 'slim' version of the console that won't support memory card slots at all.Mornelithe said:
Awww, Microsoft, did you finally give up on your proprietary storage?
For those who aren't familiar, the hard drive you strap onto the top of your XBOX 360 is an ordinary laptop hard drive which could be bought for far less than the Microsoft-branded version.
...it could be, if they didn't intentionally prevent you from doing so. The XBOX and the hard drive have to do a special handshake first, which ensures that you can only use the Microsoft-branded (and marked up) version. Some people have found ways to get ordinary off-the-shelf hard drives to perform the same handshake, but it's almost identical to modding your XBOX.
Microsoft will tell you that it does this to prevent cheating, and that may be partially true, but considering the amount of money they charge for a 120GB hard drive compared to what one normally costs, it's clear that they are profiting from this as well. They are taking commodity hardware and making it proprietary in order to create scarcity and raise prices, which is probably the most anti-competitive thing a company can do.
And as icing on the cake, years after their initial release, they start allowing the use of commodity hardware (USB drives) and they call it a feature! That's right, we've finally unlocked what should have been available all along, and we aren't even charging you for it, because that's the kind of nice people that we are.
The 16GB limit is interesting too. There are already several 64GB flash drives on the market and sizes continue to increase. You can also use USB hard drives, which can easily go into the terabytes. Why the 16GB limit? The first hard drive was 20GB and they are up to 250GB models. A flash drive works essentially the same as a hard drive -- no special file system considerations need to be made. So if there's no practical reason, why intentionally limit them to 16GB?
Oh, right, because they still sell hard drives at ridiculous prices. Why would a person buy an XBOX 250GB drive for $130 when they could buy a generic 250GB portable hard drive for $60? But with external drives limited to a total of 32GB (and a single one at 16GB, which means wasting 2 hard drives just to get 32GB), there is still no practical replacement for the overpriced 250GB hard drive.
It's awfully nice of Microsoft to go through all this trouble for us, but it would have been even better if they didn't try to screw us in the first place and if they didn't insist on continuing to do so now.
For those who aren't familiar, the hard drive you strap onto the top of your XBOX 360 is an ordinary laptop hard drive which could be bought for far less than the Microsoft-branded version.
...it could be, if they didn't intentionally prevent you from doing so. The XBOX and the hard drive have to do a special handshake first, which ensures that you can only use the Microsoft-branded (and marked up) version. Some people have found ways to get ordinary off-the-shelf hard drives to perform the same handshake, but it's almost identical to modding your XBOX.
Microsoft will tell you that it does this to prevent cheating, and that may be partially true, but considering the amount of money they charge for a 120GB hard drive compared to what one normally costs, it's clear that they are profiting from this as well. They are taking commodity hardware and making it proprietary in order to create scarcity and raise prices, which is probably the most anti-competitive thing a company can do.
And as icing on the cake, years after their initial release, they start allowing the use of commodity hardware (USB drives) and they call it a feature! That's right, we've finally unlocked what should have been available all along, and we aren't even charging you for it, because that's the kind of nice people that we are.
The 16GB limit is interesting too. There are already several 64GB flash drives on the market and sizes continue to increase. You can also use USB hard drives, which can easily go into the terabytes. Why the 16GB limit? The first hard drive was 20GB and they are up to 250GB models. A flash drive works essentially the same as a hard drive -- no special file system considerations need to be made. So if there's no practical reason, why intentionally limit them to 16GB?
Oh, right, because they still sell hard drives at ridiculous prices. Why would a person buy an XBOX 250GB drive for $130 when they could buy a generic 250GB portable hard drive for $60? But with external drives limited to a total of 32GB (and a single one at 16GB, which means wasting 2 hard drives just to get 32GB), there is still no practical replacement for the overpriced 250GB hard drive.
It's awfully nice of Microsoft to go through all this trouble for us, but it would have been even better if they didn't try to screw us in the first place and if they didn't insist on continuing to do so now.
This is great news. Given that I have about ten USB drives laying around, this will be an easy way for me to keep playing with more space and without the need to upgrade my hard drive and buy a transfer cable. Thanks Microsoft!
Well maybe this will see some Xbox 360 modding/homebrew not unlike the Wii. Heavens knows I'd be far more willing to buy a console that will be able to support hacking/cheating in offline games. I mean, come on, I'd be much more willing to play RE5 some more if I didn't have to worry about Shiva using up all the herbs/ammo.
I hardly play anything on my cousin's Xbox besides Fable 2 because some of the games he owns are either to difficult to enjoy or I just don't have the time anymore to devote to mastering a game. ..and Fable 2 has the EXP trick anyways, so I'm having a blast.
I hardly play anything on my cousin's Xbox besides Fable 2 because some of the games he owns are either to difficult to enjoy or I just don't have the time anymore to devote to mastering a game. ..and Fable 2 has the EXP trick anyways, so I'm having a blast.