What you need to know
- Xbox Series X|S storage can be expanded with a 1TB card from Seagate, but it's a bit pricey.
- Recently, we were sent exclusive promo materials confirming a cheaper 512GB option.
- The new 512GB Xbox storage card will likely appear in time for the 2021 holiday season.
One of the most contentious aspects of the new Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles is the storage situation. The new NVME SSDs give us the fastest Xbox console loading speed in history, taking games like GTAV down from almost two minutes of initial loading time down to mere seconds. However, both consoles come with relatively restrictive storage options, with 512 GB on the Xbox Series S, and 1TB on the Xbox Series X. While that was great initially, game download sizes are becoming crazily huge, with games like Call of Duty and Halo Infinite approaching or even breaking the 100GB mark.
There is a solution for Xbox. The best Xbox Series X and S SSD available right now is the Seagate official 1TB expansion card. Unfortunately, being CFExpress, it's quite expensive, hitting $220 on average. There may be cheaper options on the way.
Recently, retail listings appeared in France teasing a 512GB Xbox storage expansion card from Seagate, designed for the new-gen consoles. This would undoubtedly be far cheaper than the 1TB option currently available, perhaps even roughly half as expensive, given that it has half of the storage. Thanks to an anonymous tip-off, we recently received, it seems that those storage solutions could be coming in time for the holiday period.
It seems Seagate will begin promoting their new 512GB Xbox storage expansion card from as early as next week, as promotional materials have begun showing up in U.S. retailers. In addition to the 512GB expansion card which essentially boosts your internal storage, Seagate is also gearing up to offer a USB-based SSD deep storage solution, which will allow you to store games separately from the internal storage pool. While you won't be able to run new-gen games from this USB-based expansion, moving them from the USB SSD to your internal SSD will be faster than downloading them all over again, potentially.
As of writing, there's no word on how much these storage solutions will cost, but we'll be sure to update you as and when Seagate and Microsoft make these new accessories official.
