Xbox Series X|S owners will soon be able to finally expand their storage without breaking the bank, as well-known storage manufacturer, Western Digital is releasing a new line of storage cards for the consoles.
Small and compact, the new Xbox Series expandable storage cards, the WD_BLACK C50, come in 500GB and 1TB variants. At just $79.99 USD, the 500GB is now the cheapest licensed option for adding some more SSD storage to the Xbox Series X|S. For those who’d rather have more space and can spend a little more money, there’s also a 1TB model for $149.99.
More Xbox Series expandable storage = more space for fun
Much like the PS5, Microsoft has made SSDs the focus of the Xbox Series X|S systems. Both consoles make use of an internal SSD, although they come in at different sizes. The Xbox Series X is advertised as a 1TB system, but only 802GB are accessible to the user to install their games on. The Xbox Series S, which is digital-only, has an even smaller storage unit, featuring a mere 364GB of usable space. With so many modern titles sometimes surpassing the 100GB mark, it’s practically inevitable for Xbox Series owners to get more storage (unless you keep deleting older games to make space for new ones.)
When the consoles launched a few years ago, the only official option was by Seagate, priced at an eye-watering $220 with a 1TB model. As a pre-emptive move against the new WD_BLACK C50 cards, Seagate has since reduced the price of its Xbox Series expansion cards to $89.99 for the 512GB model, $149.99 for the 1TB model and $279.99 for the 2TB model.
Clearly, these prices are right in line with what Western Digital has to offer, with WD’s 500GB model coming in just $10 cheaper and 12GB smaller. Nevertheless, the point is that now there’s finally more options for Xbox Series X|S users, Also, we could see a price drop around big sale seasons such as Black Friday.
Despite this win for Team Green, it’s still all a bit of annoyance compared to the realm of PS5, where much like a typical PC, you can buy a standard M.2 SSD and simply insert it into the console, rather than needing a proprietary memory card. The only real caveat is that the card must be properly compatible with the PS5 in order to function with the system. Regardless, SSD prices as a whole are coming down across the board. Arguably, we can thank both of these systems for adopting the tech and helping this happen.
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