Next-gen consoles embracing speedy solid-state drives should be great for gaming overall, but it does create issues when it comes to storage expansion – the days of plugging any old cheap portable hard drive into your console are over! Way back in March, Microsoft announced they’d be offering a proprietary Xbox Series X 1TB SSD expansion card, developed in partnership with Seagate, but we haven’t heard much about it since.
Well, the Xbox Series X/S memory expansion card if officially up for pre-order at Best Buy, and you’d better prepare your wallet if you want one, as they cost a whopping $220. Now, that’s not actually a terrible price for what’s basically a 1TB NVMe SSD in a special case, but still, I suspect most Xbox Series X/S owners are going to wait on upgrading their internal storage (if they do it at all). Here’s a bit more detail about the memory expansion straight from Best Buy’s listing:
Instantly expand the peak speed capacity of the most-powerful gaming experience Xbox has ever created with the Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S. Effortlessly compatible with the Xbox Velocity Architecture, experience the fastest load times and most dynamic worlds – even improving the overall performance of thousands of Original Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games. The ultimate power, speed, and compatibility is now at your fingertips.
Key Features
- Seamless gameplay – Designed in partnership with Xbox to seamlessly play Xbox Series X games from the internal SSD or the expansion card without sacrificing graphics, latency, load times, or framerates.
- Exclusive to Xbox – The only available expansion card that replicates the Xbox Velocity Architecture – providing faster load times, richer environments, and more immersive gameplay.
- Quick resume – Switch between titles in seconds – directly from the internal SSD or the expansion card.
- High capacity – 1TB of storage increases the overall capacity of the Xbox Series X|S – collect thousands of games across four generations of Xbox without sacrificing performance.
Will you be picking up one of these memory expansion cards? Don’t forget, the Xbox Series X comes with 1TB of storage and the Xbox Series S comes with 512GB. Those will likely fill up pretty quick given next-gen game file sizes, but you should be able to survive for a while without expanding.
