Xbox One Getting External Hard Drive Support In June Update

As I've struggled to download a whopping 51 GB of Wolfenstein: The New Order over the past 30 hours, there couldn't be a better time to announce that the Xbox One will receive support for external hard drives in an upcoming June update.

The update allows for support of USB 3.0 drives of at least 256 GB or larger, and you'll be able to transfer full games, DLC and apps to the storage device, and take them to another Xbox One to play. Who says you can't share digital downloads? Though obviously you'll have to sign in using your own Xbox Live ID to play your game on a friend's system.

The update will give the Xbox One a feature Sony's PS4 lacks. Currently, the PS4 does not have external hard drive support, but you can upgrade the internal HDD with one of your own choosing, which is something not possible on Xbox One.

The move is particularly needed for the One which despite boasting a 500 GB hard drive, only about 360 GB of that is free for your own content. If you can't upgrade your hard drive, then external support is a must if we're now living in the age of 51 GB Wolfenstein games. Granted that's the exception (most games I've downloaded are about 20-25 GB), but it's likely the requirements will continue to increase over time.

The ability to play downloaded games on a different Xbox One is kind of neat, though not quite the easy digital sharing Microsoft envisioned before their 180 on a number of their policies after last year's E3. Neither is it as simple as bringing a disc over to a friend's place, but at least it's possible now.

External storage isn't the only piece of the June update. It also will bring with it Real Name support, meaning you can list your Xbox Live friends by their real name rather than their gamertags. Before people freak out over privacy concerns, it's optional, so no worries there. Real Name capability was supposed to be done in time for launch, but it ended up being delayed until now.

The update also brings more SmartGlass features, including the ability to make it a universal a remote to control your TV and DVR. That's actually pretty cool, as lord knows I can't stand my wretched Time Warner TV remote, or the Wiimote-like wand thing that came with my LG TV.

All in all, these are some fairly significant additions for the Xbox One, and further evidence that these consoles are constantly evolving pieces of hardware. How they'll function five years from now will be vastly different than what we see today. In the short term, external hard drive support is a must given how quickly Xbox Ones are already filling up with content, and the other items aren't insignificant either.

Should fans push Sony for external storage support next, or should they be content with an upgradable HDD?

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