The Xbox 360 uses since its inception, proprietary storage devices: a hard drive with either a limited capacity or high price of memory cards is offering at best 512 MB of storage space. But with version 3.21 of the operating system console, it is now possible to use a USB key for storing backups, demos, downloadable content, etc.

Some limitations

Microsoft imposes some limitations, not to kill the hard drive market, a real goose that lays the golden eggs. Indeed, the storage devices used may not exceed 16 GB (it is obviously possible to partition hard disks) and the data will be accessible only from the console. Additionally, some games (rare) should a priori preclude the use of a USB key for storing and require customers to use a hard drive. In fact, the USB should quickly replace the memory cards, but not hard drives.