Xbox Series X|S 2TB And 512GB Storage Expansion Cards Coming Later This Year

Microsoft made a bold and somewhat contentious choice when it opted to rely on proprietary storage expansion cards as the sole means for expanding Xbox Series X|S new-gen game storage. While the sole option to this point for adding more space that can be used for playing Series X|S games has been the 1TB storage expansion card, Seagate has announced plans to roll out two alternatives in the coming months, including 512GB and 2TB options.

These cards will work identically to the existing 1TB ones, in that you simply plug it into the port on the rear of the console to use it--there's no involved installation process, as with PS5's M.2 SSDs. What changes, of course, are the prices: Whereas the 1TB card sells retails for $220 USD (and is occasionally discounted to the $190 range) the 512GB will sell for $140 and the 2TB will sell for a whopping $400. NVMe storage is never cheap, but these do put a premium on what you'd expect to pay if you were just browsing for a PC SSD in equivalent sizes.

The 512GB expansion card will release in mid-November, and preorders are live now at Walmart in the US, though they've sold out for the time being. The 2TB card will launch in "early December," with preorders set to open sometime in November.

There's no word on whether Seagate has plans for any other capacities, nor do we know if Microsoft will allow any other companies to produce expansion cards in the future. It's worth bearing in mind that both Series X and Series S consoles have only a single expansion slot, meaning that you can't use more than one card at a time, so you should be confident in the size you purchase before committing to one. (You can, however, swap between cards if you run out of room.) As always, games can be moved to an external drive connected via USB, but only backwards compatible games can be played from those; any native Series X|S games need to be moved to internal storage or an expansion card in order to play, due to the need for their higher speeds.

As noted above, these expansion cards do come with the benefit of being extremely easy to use, although whether that's worth the trade-off compared with Sony's approach with PS5 is a matter of much debate.