Xbox 360 getting USB storage support in Spring 2010 firmware update?

Could this be the dawn of a new era? One where I’m not forced to suffer with a small hard drive because I, like many others, can’t justify the price of a bigger one? Probably not, but the outlook now has a shimmer of light at the end. I’ve been sitting on empty when it comes to available drive space on my 360 for almost a year now and the Spring update might just change that.

Documents have surfaced showing that Microsoft is possibly going to enable USB mass storage support for the 360. This likely means that downloaded Xbox Live and Arcade games, DLC, game videos, demos, installed games and everything else can be saved to an external HDD.

The document says the storage device itself has to be 1GB or more and a system partition of 512MB is required. Seems that the drive will be limited to using 16 GB of space though so speculation still exists that this might just be a large replacement for the memory cards. Other rumors say this might be a way for Microsoft to trim some beef from the console in preparation for a “slim” client similar to the PS3 Slim. Either way, I’m excited for the chance to have additional hard drive space without feeling like I just got violated by Microsoft.

Source: Joystiq.com

Sony Adding “Premium Level” Subscription to PSN

In the never ending console war there are always stupid reasons people choose to be on board strictly with one console or another. I have always found console loyalty to be one of the stupidest things people can tie themselves to, but then again, I'm fortunate enough to be in a position where I do not have to choose one console or another.

Seemingly one of the biggest reasons people claim PS3 to be "better" than the Xbox 360 is because their online service is free. There are a lot of things that come along with "free service" though and with Xbox Live being a paid service, they clearly have set themselves apart as the premiere online gaming community. Just ask anyone who had to suffer through connection issues on a PS3 game running over PSN that simply do not exist on the same title running on Xbox Live and it becomes clear that Live's model is a success. The stability of online play, the major updates to the dashboard, the burden of running a server being taken off the developer, the uniformity of Xbox Live features in all titles…the list goes on and on.



Obviously Sony has taken notice as well. This is just my speculation, but I think today's announcement by Kaz Hirai himself shows that PSN knows they need to step it up and catch up to Live. Announcing some vague plans for a "premium level" service, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kaz Hirai confirmed the plans. "We will be building upon our current free [PSN] service offering with premium content and services to start the subscription model," he said. What this means is still up in the air, but I would bet that we can count on seeing some type of "pay-to-play" model similar to Xbox Live.