If you're an Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S owner, the only way you can play next-gen games right now is via those consoles' internal storage, or via a special Seagate 1TB Expansion Card which admittedly is very costly.
However, UK retailer Currys PC World has now dropped the price to its lowest figure yet, going from £219.99 at launch, to £179.99 as of today. We're not sure how long this deal will last, but hopefully it'll stick around for a little while.
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The reason the Seagate 1TB Expansion Card is so expensive is because it's custom built to run at exactly the same high speeds as the internal storage on the new consoles, meaning games load much faster than on last-gen systems, and transferring data between the internal storage and the Expansion Card is seriously rapid.
You can, of course, just store next-gen games on any old USB hard drive until you're ready to play them, and Xbox One, Xbox 360 and original Xbox games work just fine on generic external hard drives, so you don't need one of these right away. But if you've had one on your wishlist for a while, this is definitely the best deal we've seen so far.
Are you picking up the Seagate 1TB Expansion Card? Let us know in the comments below.
Comments 29
Nice but I still don't see the need for this although might be because I have 350mb fibre Internet
Tempted but I might hold off and grab a Series X when they are readily available and move the Series S up to the bedroom - space won't be as much of an issue then.
I'm on XSX and have got 6 games installed at the moment and still have about 300 GB space free. Don't see myself buying one of these. They make a lot of sense for XSS, but the total price of buying both is about the same as XSX.
"However, UK retailer Currys has now dropped the price to its lowest figure yet"
And it's STILL £100 too expensive for what you get...
@GateCrasherUK If you don't mind me asking: what on Earth does your internet speed have to do with local storage options?
@ThanosReXXX I just meant because games for me don't take that long to download I don't feel the need to have lots of games stored locally I can just play a few games uninstall them then download new games without having to hang around all day for it too download and therefore I feel less need to buy this £180 is still alot of money
@ThanosReXXX probably because it's not as big a deal just deleting games and installing them because it will be done pretty quick
I just use a £94 WD 5tb external usb drive as default storage and only use internal for series X specific games. can move them back and forth as i please and way cheaper for way more storage
I just have a 1TB HD for my series S and just swap games between that if I need to, so worth it rather than spend £180, you might aswell buy a series X for that!
When it's about half this price, I might consider it worth buying. Until then, I'm fine just deleting and reinstalling things.
@ThanosReXXX
You clearly don't understand the tech being used here.
The average price for a decent branded 1TB 4th gen NVMe SSD, with a heatsink to maintain consistent performance rather than peak, is around £180-200 currently.
If you want cheap storage to just shift between internal and external, you could always buy an external USB HDD or SSD.
Waiting for someone to invent a dongle to attach regular NVME’s to the series consoles.
Took the plunge (get a discount with Currys through work and had a Gift Card from them not delivering something before Christmas). No doubt a luxury product but what the heck.
@StylesT @GateCrasherUK Ah, okay. Fair enough.
@blinx01 And you clearly don't understand sarcasm and the finer art of embellishment...
I got mine for free as walmart never rang it up but put it in the bag when i bought a bunch of games and a elite controller…guess they never noticed they didnt scan it…
@Medic_Alert if both systems are the same aka series S or both series x the card will hotswap no issue, but as you said if ones is a S and the othe is a X there are differnent versions(or at least different textures as the file size for S games is slightly less from what i have seen on my systems…
@Medic_Alert i have noticed that some games that are Series X/S will play without being on the internal drive it just reverts to the one X version on my series X,,,it will have that left right arrow symbol on it telling you to transfer to the internal drive, but it will still play just fine just not the series version…and i did the same thing got a Series S for the living room with the 1080p tv and a series X in the gaming room with the OLED
Worth noting that you can trade in your Microsoft Rewards points for Currys PC World gift cards as well. It's not the best conversion ratio, but it brings the price down all the same!
@Medic_Alert I have the same setup without the Seagate expansion card.
A 2TB USB SSD is just as fast for all backwards compatible games as the internal drive or this card. And a larger standard USB HDD is good for everything else/longer term storage.
As such I haven't felt the need to get one of these expansion cards yet. Hopefully by the time I do they will have dropped in price further.
@Dezzy I don’t understand why anybody wouldn’t just delete and reinstall games anyway rather than buying an expansion card? Sure with Quick Resume it now makes more sense to have multiple games installed but there must be the odd game or two that someone wouldn’t go back to for awhile so it would make sense to delete them to free up space. It’s their choice and money but apart from it being a small convenience, I don’t see the point in them.
@MaccaMUFC
People who have a slow internet connection? I live in the middle of the countryside. Until about 1 year ago when we finally got fibre-optic, downloading a 100GB game would take over a week.
@Medic_Alert I’ll be interested to hear if it’s as easy as unplugging from series X and plugging into Series S. Or vice versa.
I know it’s been reported that series S download field can be smaller. Keep us posted.
@Medic_Alert nice! Thanks for the update. Definitely could be useful.
@Medic_Alert that is brilliant. Although for balance I should say my PS4 -> PS5 upgrade was as simple as unplugging a USB HDD and plugging it in. Everything was recognised, everything worked, no issues, same as Series X. I know that wasn’t everyone’s experience but it’s worth noting it was for many.
@Medic_Alert Indeed! To be fair the PC world expected a range of high-end PCI Gen 4 drives by now that have just not materialised. Between COVID, Natural disasters and the semi-conductor shortage this seems 6-12 months behind where it was expected to be. That's one downside to not being proprietary.
But to be honest I don't thing this is an issue for 90+% of users YET, there just aren't enough PS5 games (and I don't play Call of Duty), however it will become more necessary with time.
The lack of backing up PS5 games to USB SSD/HDD is the bigger blow for PS5 for me. One of many individually small decisions that add up.
I want my collection ready to play and will pay a premium for it.
I have a couple of these, they work great to swap between different home consoles and to bring over to my friends houses.
I used back-up storage last gen as PS was (and still is a bit) very slow to download online. But I'm getting download speeds of 900Mbps on the XSX, faster than I can pull off local attached disk. So until much later in the gen when the price drops I'll just delete and reinstall.
Payday today so went to treatises and they are back up to full price. Will wait for another sale as £220 is almost what I paid for the console.
Edit: I caved and picked it up
currently have the halo games and Code Vein downloading as I had ran out of space on the Series S
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