Microsoft, by way of Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb has now officially confirmed that USB 3.0 external storage support will be finally made available with the June 2014 update for the Xbox One. Perhaps the best news that Xbox One owners have waited to hear with the storage on their internal hard drives continuing to dwindle.
The scoop on the external storage support for the Xbox One is that you will have to have a USB 3.0 storage device that is 256GB or larger. The Xbox One will support up to two external hard drives. You will have to be willing to let the drive be formatted by the Xbox One, so you will not be using it for anything else other than the Xbox One after it is formatted. The utilities to manage the external hard drive that are included will help users be able to move content from the internal drive on to the new external storage in one easy step. (While not officially talked about, our understanding from out sources is that USB flash drives that are USB 3.0 and at least 256GB and able to meet the speed requirements for read/write can also be used. SSDs that are 256GB in size that are put in an external USB 3.0 hard drive shell should also be supported as long as the read/write performance is acceptable.) Microsoft has also confirmed that the upper storage limit is 16TB which is a lot of space.
Once plugged into the Xbox One and formatted, the external USB 3.0 hard drive will allow you to copy and move games and game add-ons to this drive to increase your storage space. Users will be able to disconnect the drive and plug it into friends Xbox One and use the content stored on the drive, but you will have to log-in to Xbox Live and supply the original game disc if the game was installed from disc to begin with. Digital downloaded games will function as well, once you log into Xbox Live.
While the external storage support is the real star of the June update, Microsoft is also added “Real Name” support to make it easier to find your friends. New support for SmartGlass to provide full access to OneGuide and the new Universal Remote control support. Microsoft will also be expanding TV and OneGuide into additional markets with this update. Of course you already know about the new Games With Gold titles that will be coming to Xbox One finally with the first titles arriving in June as well.
