Xbox Series X / S Official SSD Expansion Costs a Ridiculous $220

The official SSD expansion is nearly as costly as a console.

Microsoft announced a while back that they’d be collaborating with Seagate (as they often do) to release the official SSD storage expansion for the Xbox Series X and Series S. Recent reports had suggested that the expansion would be a costly one at $220, and now, that’s been officially confirmed.

A listing for the Seagate 1 TB SSD expansion for the Xbox Series X and Series S recently went up on Best Buy, and the price is concretely listed as $219.99. That’s a ridiculously high price, at just $80 cheaper than the Xbox Series S itself. Hell, this expansion is costlier than a Nintendo Switch Lite.

Game sizes are getting constantly bigger (though they will be somewhat smaller on the Xbox Series S than on the Series X, as per Microsoft), and they’re bound to get bigger still with next-gen, which means extra storage is something a lot of people are going to need. Add to that the fact that the Xbox Series S – which is already entirely reliant on downloads, being a discless console – only has an internal storage of 512 GB, and that storage expansion becomes even more crucial.

It’s worth noting that the Seagate SSD expansion is going to be the only one that will be fully compatible with the Xbox Velocity Architecture, which is designed to provide faster load times and more efficient streaming of assets. Additionally, any and all games optimized for the Xbox Series X and Series S need the Velocity Architecture, which means an alternative storage expansion won’t be compatible with those games.

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