Microsoft gave us a recap of the Xbox Series X's tech specs with Director of Program Management Jason Ronald during yesterday's Inside Xbox show. He talked about a variety of new features (you can watch the full thing above), including how external storage will work on the system:
"What you just held up was the 1TB Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X that we've developed in partnership with Seagate, and that matches the internal performance exactly. And it's all about sustained performance, so if a game takes full advantage of the Xbox Velocity Architecture, that same game can live on the internal storage, or can live on that external expandable storage card, and you'll get the exact same performance."
Xbox Live's Major Nelson also chipped in to provide clarification on how external hard drives - rather than SSDs - will work on Xbox Series X. Ultimately, he suggested you'll be able to store all games on HDDs, but they'll only be fully compatible with Xbox One (and presumably Xbox and Xbox 360) games.
"You can always take your Xbox One games and play them directly off your external hard drive when connected to Xbox Series X. Now for Xbox Series X games, you can certainly store them on your external hard drive, but when you're ready to play them, you're going to want to move them to the internal SSD or the Seagate expansion drive."
How costly do you think the Seagate Storage Expansion Card will be for Xbox Series X? Give us your predictions below.
[source youtu.be]
Comments 13
It all makes sense and will make things easier for people like me with a 4 TB HDD connected to an Xbox One. I'll probably move the Xbox One/Xbox 360/Xbox games I play the most to the internal memory and I'll buy an expansion card eventually. They'll release 2 TB expansion cards in the future, that will be more interesting.
I used to be a PC gamer in the before time (before I got lazy & cheap and didn't want to keep upgrading a PC) so this SSD stuff is getting me all hot & bothered. That said, I don't play a ton of games at once, so I reckon the external drive (and maybe the seagate expansion) won't be a necessity;
I hope they have larger sizes available. If I can slot in a 4tb ssd it will be preferable
This will be fine for me. I almost always just play one game at a time, so I should be 👍🏻.
I already have an external HD for my Xbox One and with internal memory on the XSX, plus one of these cards, I should be fine.
Price is key here. The way file sizes are going, 1TB in 4/5 years' time will not be the same as 1 TB now in terms of usability. I think expandable storage is a must but it has to be affordable, because we will all need it.
The real question is what kind of price we are looking at here. Hopefully nothing beyond 100 $/euro
I will probably keep managing my storage like I do now. I’m just honest about what I will play soon and uninstall things I know I won’t.
Its simple - keep all your 'old' games on your external HDD - 3 generations of games and that leaves the internal (and any external SSD expansion) for the Series X generation games. It seems you can store those games on the External HDD so you can just move them across if you want. It seems easy enough to slot in a new expansion card too so you could have multiple and just swap them over.
I don't think it will be as expensive per TB as anything for the PS5 - if they allow you to 'expand' the SSD or maybe have to swap it out like the PS4/Pro internal HDD (before they allowed USB external HDD support). If you want 2 TB's on that, you may have to buy a 2TB internal SSD to swap out the one provided where as on Series X, its a case of just buying a 1TB expansion card. I know I am speculating but right now, there isn't any SSD options with the same connection and bandwidth as PS5 so I do think that may well be more expensive. SSD's aren't 'cheap' per TB so I do expect the 1TB expansion to be more expensive than a 1TB HDD but we shall see if its more expensive than current SSD's with similar speeds...
I am actually very pleased with proprietary expansions. They look really cool. Just like cartridges.
@HydroTendonMan Yeah, but hopefully it also means that installing games is instantaneous as well, so you don't have to worry about deleting game files and reinstalling them later.
@Octane That would be great to have, but if your broadband isn't good you could still be stuck waiting. I have decent broadband but I like to keep as much as I can on disk to save the hassle. Quick install times would definitely help.
They know how the Vita went down, so they won't make expandable storage resemble a country club membership.
@HydroTendonMan That's what I meant! Installing them from disc, not downloading them.
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...