Joystiq is reporting that they have documentation that confirms USB storage support is coming to the Xbox 360 with a Spring 2010 system update. The article states:

“Documentation obtained by Joystiq – and subsequently confirmed with two separate sources – reveals that ‘USB Mass Storage Device Support on Xbox 360′ will soon be a reality. The document, authored by a senior software development engineer at Microsoft, states that 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.”

Xbox 360 owners will be able to store all kinds of data to USB sticks including profiles, XBLA games and even full retail games. These games can then be run from the stick. Just as with games that are installed to the harddrive, running a game from a USB stick will require the retail disc be in the tray. Supposedly, users can register two USB sticks with their console and these sticks must be 16GB’s or less. This means you could get two 16GB sticks and net yourself a hefty 32GB of additional storage.

This news comes on the heals of rumors about a new “slim” Xbox 360 model which may not support the original console memory units. It is possible that memory units are being phased out entirely as it has become increasingly difficult to find them at retail stores. Either way, the USB option is a nice, and more importantly, cheap way to increase the storage capacity of the console.