The next generation of consoles has dawned upon us. In the new age of 8k graphics and virtually no in-game load times, the incredible performance capabilities of the current consoles are held back by their storage. On both the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S there are only about 812 GB and 364 GB of usable storage respectively. On average, this means you can only store about 4 to 6 games on the Xbox Series X and only 2 to 3 games on the Series S.
As an example, Call of Duty: Black ops Cold War is 190 GB for the full game. Combined with Modern Warfare with Warzone it totals to 323.3 GB! It’s easy to see how storage would fill up quickly. 323.3 GB is over 40 percent of the Xbox Series X and 89 percent on the Xbox Series S. While this is very frustrating for consumers, Xbox users benefit from Microsoft’s expandable Seagate Storage Expansion Card that is available for purchase now.
Why the Seagate Storage Expansion Card is the only option for Xbox Series S/X
The Seagate Storage Expansion Card is Microsoft’s 1 TB expandable SSD that is made in partnership with Seagate. The card is small, compact, and slides right into the back of the console. At the moment, the Seagate Storage Expansion Card is the only SSD card that is capable of running in tandem with Microsoft’s Velocity Architecture. The Velocity Architecture is enabled by the recent adoption of PCIe 4.0 which doubles the bandwidth available and allows even more data to be utilized by the system at a much faster data transfer rate. This is what makes the Xbox Series S/X 40 times more powerful than the previous Xbox One as it eliminates virtually all load times and enables “quick resume” between multiple games.
Due to the new Velocity Architecture on the Xbox Series S/X, traditional USB & PCIe 3.0 data transfer speeds can’t keep up with the data bandwidth and speed needed for the next generation of games. However, older generations of HDDs and SSDs aren’t completely useless. They are still capable of storing and playing previous generation games. Here’s a chart that explains in greater detail taken from the official Xbox website:
SSD Suggestions for Older Generation Xbox Games
With the Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series S/X retailing at ~$219.19 dollars, it’s understandable if you’re trying to save some cash and don’t want to spend the money now. One possible solution is to use the previous generation SSDs like the Samsung T7 Portable SSD to strictly store all your Xbox One and Xbox 360 games. Thanks to the Xbox’s backwards compatibility, the consoles are capable of rendering all previous generation games. The internal storage on the Series S/X could then be strictly used to save new generation games. While upfront this doesn’t solve the entire issue, it does help increase the number of games you can have in your library. For those who are interested in potential SSDs that work well for older generation games, here are several SSD cards that we recommend:
- SAMSUNG T7 Portable SSD 500GB
- WD 1TB My Passport Go Cobalt SSD Portable External Storage
- Seagate Barracuda Fast SSD 500GB External Solid State Drive Portable
In Conclusion, TLDR
The biggest problem with the Xbox Series S/X is the limited amount of storage available. If you are using the Series S/X you can only store about 2-6 new generation games depending on the console. The next-gen of video games relies on PCIe 4.0 SSD cards making the Seagate Expandable Storage Card for Xbox Series S/X the only option currently available. Given the limited storage space that the Xbox Series S/X comes with, the Seagate Expandable Storage Card feels like an absolute necessity unless you want to constantly delete and redownload games.
