What you need to know
- WD_Black's official Xbox expansion card SSDs leaked earlier in the year, with an early listing showing the shape and style of the cards.
- These SSDs are now available across multiple retailers, with a 500 GB SSD at $80 and a 1 TB option for $150.
- WD Black is now the second branded SSD available for Xbox Series X|S users to expand their internal, ultra-fast game storage.
If you've been waiting for some new options to upgrade your console's internal storage, your patience is finally being rewarded.
The previously-leaked WD_Black Xbox expansion card SSDs are now available, with listings up on the official website and other retailers. WD_Black introduces two new cards, one with 1 TB of storage and another with 500 GB of space, which are available for purchase at $150 and $80, respectively.
This means that Xbox Series X|S users finally have a second brand to choose from when figuring out how to expand their console storage using the best SSDs available.
While Xbox players can store backward compatible games from across the original Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One libraries in an external hard drive — this is the recommended course of action, considering those games don't benefit from enhanced speeds in the same way as more modern titles — any current-generation games have to be stored on the internal SSDs. The only way to increase that high-speed storage is through these expansion cards.
Windows Central's take
As we previously mentioned, having additional options is good and will probably help keep prices down a bit moving forward. This is especially good news as more and more games such as the upcoming Starfield are being built exclusively for current-generation hardware.
That said, because of the advantages this system has over the PS5's wider set of options — installing an expansion card is ridiculously easy — we'd still expect these SSDs to remain on the slightly pricier side for a while.
There's a new SSD in town, with WD_Black offering a second choice for any Xbox players looking to expand their console storage. 500 GB and 1 TB options mean you can find something that fits your needs and budget.
