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Because USB is Hard, or Something

September 2, 2013 16:25:52.263

Are there any balls that Microsoft can't drop?

The Xbox One won't support external storage solutions when the console launches later this year, Microsoft spokesperson Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb confirmed during a live recording of his podcast at PAX Prime 2013. Responding to a question from an audience member, Hryb explained that the company plans to allow Xbox One users to utilize external hard drives if they need more space than the console's internal 500 GB hard drive allows. However, he didn't think that feature would be available at launch.

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posted by James Robertson

Comments

Re: Because USB is Hard, or Something

[Lex Spoon] September 2, 2013 16:54:03.616

I don't know anything about Xbox, but in general, it's not trivial to support external storage in a console. The games have to provide UI for letting people store things externally. Additionally, games have to support additional states where they have saved data but the user has unplugged the appropriate drive.

Remember the days of "please insert save-game disk and press any key"?

I must not be imaginative enough, but I am a little surprised Microsoft is getting into the issue at all. When I picture the typical Xbox user, they aren't using it to host lots of their own media. They're playing games, and all of those games are either downwloaded from the store or are played off of optical disks.

Re: Because USB is Hard, or Something

[James Robertson] September 2, 2013 19:46:58.550

They already support cloud storage of games, and have done so for years. You can save games to an external USB stick on a current gen XBox, which means that the support for this.... already exists. The only explanation possible is some level of insane politics within MS.

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