Joystiq is reporting that, in some documents they obtained and had confirmed by a couple sources, that support for using a USB storage device on your Xbox 360 may become a reality this year. What does this mean for you and I? We will be able to save and transfer game save files to and from a USB storage device in addition to the system's hard drive. Although, I'm sure this was aimed mostly at Xbox 360 owners who don't even have a hard drive, to allow them to avoid buying memory cards altogether.

The document was authored by a senior software development engineer at Microsoft, and it states this:

Due to "increased market penetration of high-capacity, high throughput USB mass storage devices, a 2010 Xbox 360 system update" will allow consumers to save and load game data from USB devices. The update is purportedly coming in Spring 2010.

You will supposedly be able to use the USB device for anything that you would typically use the hard drive for, besides, of course, running the system's built-in software, or the dashboard. This means you will be able to save and run Xbox Live Arcade and Indie titles from it, save, back up and transfer game save files, and keep DLC and title updates on the device. This would greatly expand the use of the system as a whole for owners who don't have a hard drive. I personally think this is an awesome idea, and kudos to Microsoft if it is indeed becoming a reality.

I can see this also being used for those of us who have hard drives to keep certain data separate or just basically expand our system's storage without having to fork over the ridiculous amounts of money that Microsoft wants for their proprietary hardware. So, it would seem, that Microsoft isn't finding the Xbox 360 memory card and hard drive business too lucrative. Maybe in the future all systems will support something like this to go above and beyond the capacity of the (typically small compared to current technology) internal drives.