If you own an Xbox Series X, the only way to expand your storage is to pick up a Seagate SSD expansion card — because an ordinary external drive can’t handle Xbox Series X games. That can be an expansive option, with Seagate's SSD card costing around half the price of the Series X.
But according to a new rumor, the cost of buying an expansion card may be about to drop. French website Xbox Squad claims that a 500GB Seagate expansion card is on the way. While this report was initially just an unverified rumor, one French retailer has since listed the 500GB card for €155 ($182) with a November 14 release date.
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That’s noticeably cheaper than the $220 it costs to buy a 1TB Seagate expansion card. Not by much, if Microsoft sells the cards at the higher end of Xbox Squad’s estimate. But it would still lower the cost of expanding the Xbox Series X’s storage space.
That being said, with games growing larger and larger as time goes on, Microsoft should really be going in the opposite direction. 1TB of built in storage only goes so far, especially when certain games can’t help but take up more than 100GB of storage space. Microsoft Flight Simulator needs 102GB of space, for instance, while Gears 5 takes up 101.5GB.
And just imagine how much space Halo Infinite is going to need when it launches, considering Halo 5: Guardians needs a 98.8GB. In other words, 1TB doesn’t feel like enough, and 500GB isn't going to go very far.
A 2TB expansion card feels like a better option, even if it would no doubt cost significantly more than the $220 1TB cards currently on sale. Especially since Sony recently rolled out PS5 updates, giving players the chance to add extra SSD space to the console.
You need to use specific types of SSDs with the PS5, and high-capacity SSDs are not cheap to begin with. But PS5 owners still have that option if they want it, while Microsoft and Seagate’s proprietary expansion drives put Xbox gamers at a disadvantage. The least Microsoft could both do is give us a variety of storage options.
Sure, you can always free up space by deleting old games, but then you have to go through the process of reinstalling them on the off chance that you want to start playing again. Even players with physical discs will have to wait for patches and updates to download during that process. So better to give us more space to work with and minimize that issue.
Then again, with the Xbox Series X only rocking 1TB of storage space and the Xbox Series S coming with 500GB, being able to add an extra 500GB is still better than nothing. But if you are opting for the smaller (and cheaper) expansion option, make sure you’re fully aware of how far that extra space will go. It may even be worth spending the extra $40 or so to double the additional space.
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