Microsoft spokesman Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb has confirmed during a recent podcast at PAX Prime 2013 (via NeoGAF) that the upcoming Xbox One console will not support external storage drives on launch later this year.

Responding to an audience members question, Hryb revealed that Microsoft are planning on supporting external storages if players feel the default 500GB hard drives found in the next-gen console. However, he wasn't aware that the feature would be available on launch later this year.

The Xbox One will ship with a 500GB hard drive, all of them have that. The future plan is definitely to support external storage, much like we do on the Xbox 360.

My understanding is that feature won't be there at launch because the team's working on other things. It's definitely on the list, but I don't know when it'll come in though.

Microsoft previously confirmed back in May that the USB 3.0 ports on the back of the console are available for external storage use, though the console's native hard drive was unable to be replaced. Hopefully we'll hear more on when exactly we can expect support but for now a 500GB hard drive should be more than enough.