It's been over two years since the Seagate range of Expansion Cards were first made available for Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, and now we're finally about to get an alternative option from a new manufacturer in the near future.
According to a listing over at Best Buy (which has since been deleted), Western Digital will be releasing a 1TB Xbox Series X|S Expansion Card for $179.99. This is slightly lower than the $199.99 MSRP 1TB version made by Seagate.
"As game files get larger and larger, the WD_BLACK C50 Expansion Card for Xbox is the fast and easy way to give your Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S a big capacity boost so you can keep more titles installed. Just plug this officially licensed card directly into the dedicated slot on the back of your Xbox Series X|S console and it’s good to go, no extra software or installation steps needed.
The card delivers similar performance as the Xbox internal storage for a seamless experience when you’re installing, loading, playing, and saving your favorite games. Keep your library ready to play and get into the action fast with the WD_BLACK C50 Expansion Card for Xbox."
For the time being, there's no word on a release date for this WD_BLACKC50 Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S, nor do we know whether it'll also be available in 512GB and 2TB formats like the options from Seagate. As soon as we hear more, we'll let you know!
Back in 2020, Xbox's Jason Ronald mentioned that "additional capacities and implementations" for these cards would be offered in the future, so it's great to see another company providing an alternative... even if it's still pretty expensive!
What are your thoughts on this? Let us know down in the comments below.
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[source bestbuy.com]
Comments 37
Yes it’s still expensive, but glad there’s another option. Hopefully they bring in more sizes and more manufacturers than just these two.
@NorthwestEagle that’s a great idea. I wouldn’t know how to do it, but I’m sure somebody out there with a 3D printer could probably figure it out.
Still pretty expensive, but it's a step in the right direction!
a) More options is always better. Price is still too high.
b) I already have the 2TB. When do we get a 4TB option?
Still $100 too much...
@EvilSilentFrame unfortunately MS has software blocked other SSD’s from working. I have a cfexpress to NVME dongle that slots in just fine but when booting up basically states that the drive is not supported….. really unfortunate
Overall, this is still way too expensive, an official dongle would be ideal, but MUCH cheaper options would be welcome as well. Hopefully once we crack open the WD SSD we’ll discover that their internals are cheap online
Honestly at this point I am hoping for a mid-gen refresh that accepts NVME M.2 drives, at least for expansion.
The Xbox storage card isn't the best choice! It's Spacers Choice!
I bought the 500gb one awhile back for my Series S. Don't know why but I'm tempted to buy another one but not use it because I like the aesthetics of it. Too poor for that though at the moment 😅
This is exactly what we needed. Some competition should lower the prices.
@SplooshDmg you’ve tried the best now try the rest spacers choice. “Nailed it.”
I got the 1TB from a friend for $80 dollars. I love the plug and play of it, but they need more makers of it to drive the price down. Looks like that could be in the works. Hardware wise i just like the Series X so much more than my PS5. As much as i like the Haptics and tension on the triggers for the Dual Sense, i much much prefer the Xbox Controller. I am hoping we see an Elite 3 this year.
@Green-Bandit I couldn’t agree more, the Xbox controller just feels right. The ps5 controller is awesome for all its bells and whistles, but even since ps1 days I have always loathed them shape and feel.
@Adol-Bannings same, Sony has had some killer games from PS1-PS5 but playing them on their controllers has for me always been the worse part. I wanted to love the Dual Sense, cause every review for it, was saying this is the better next gen controller and microsoft shouldn’t have played the if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. After finally finding a PS5 and buying Ratchet and Clank, i found that the size of it hurt my left thumb, and I was reaching for the triggers and something just felt very PlayStation about the controller over all. Since then i have only played God of War and Last of Us and PS5 is once again another PS since the PS3 that is only for exclusives and i play all 3rd party on Xbox.
@Green-Bandit I personally like the Xbox os better as well, and series s and x have quick resume ps5 doesn’t and it doesn’t load as fast in game.
I would like an option to disable smart delivery, and if I could save the Xbox One X version on USB, my problem would be solved.
@Adol-Bannings i for sure like the Xbox OS better than PS. However and not to go on a rant. But while i like it better there is room for improvement. Home Screen and achievements pages would be the best start. I have always wanted xbox or PS to give us the options to delete games we didn’t like from our profile. Take the points and trophies back, i am sure it’s one or two anyways. Less ad’s is a given, and something i noticed on PS5 is all the apps and Os runs in 4K HDR, Xbox doesn’t run HDR and some apps looks way blurrier than the PS5 counterparts, my Apple Music app for sure, overall Xbox Os is better than PS5 but has room to improve. I find it wordy and needs to trim some fat and streamline it, something i find Microsoft as a company isn’t as good at as it should be.
It's still too f-ing expensive!
3 thoughts.
1. Glad there is another option. Competition might bring prices down
2. It's still FAR too expensive. A 1TB Gen 4 NVME costs around $80 / $85 and the price is falling, why is this over TWICE the price at $180?
3. Typical, I finally succumbed and bought one last week, though I paid considerably less than this.
@themightyant
no its around 129USD. the 80 u mentioned is lower readwrite rates than xobx needs. so its not expensive at all.
but u can try this with higher cost and No Guarantee
https://youtu.be/0pt7es84Hhw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVd3K7hP8VI
@kihaennem No it isn't. See this list on Eurogamer of Gen 4 nvme drives with 5500MB sequential reads, easily fast enough for XSX.
In fact you can buy 2TB for less than this proprietary 1TB Xbox one.
Making your own isn't really cheaper as it currently only works with one or two western digital nvme drives. I looked into this previously
@EvilSilentFrame @NorthwestEagle They already have manufactured just the shell, you can buy these already. But the trouble is Xbox / Seagate has locked down which nvme drives specifically can be used and because they are short format and rare they are prohibitively expensive. It isn't really any cheaper and comes with risks / problems.
Any movement on price is to be welcomed, but...this is still well expensive. I think its a real shame MS adopted propriety drives. Had they of gone the route of their competition, there are already 1TB options for £75 and 2TB WD drive is £150. These prices continue to fall so the gulf in prices will likely be larger soon.
Do you happen to know if it is possible to have a splitter for these cards, @FraserG? Rather than having to swap cards, is it possible to have two cards fitted at the same time? I hope that makes sense. I have a 2TB card already, and would quite like to have another one, but would want both operational at all times...
Hopefully a bit of competition in this space will finally start to bring the price down a bit on them.
So not really cheaper then but slightly less dear ?
@Fiendish-Beaver Never heard of anything like that personally.
Plug and play is nice, the price not so much. Sure seems this is one area Sony got it right.
Still $100 too much!!!
@Trmn8r Lol exactly my thought!
@Green-Bandit The Playstation controller is the VERY reason not bought Playstation. If reasonably priced wireless Xbox style controller was out I'd buy PS5 next day. But oy seen $400+ and is too much for that controller.
They need to do better with the price point. The plug & play (+swapping consoles) is great but I don’t mind the PS way.
It took forever for 3rd party drives to start arriving. IDK how it's taken so long, but it's good to see it starting. Price competition might finally start driving XB storage to sane levels. Let's hope more companies join in. AData or someone should really get prices going.
@Fiendish-Beaver I don't think anything like that exists currently. What you'd need is a (licensed?) custom interface that connects to some sort of RAID controller, to just run multiple drives in RAID or JBOD clusters. Such a solution COULD exist in theory, and they you can just use multiple regular Gen3 SSDs in your cluster, but you'd need that array controller hardware in an "Xbox proprietary connection' format to be able to do it. What Roland (or Spencer?) hinted at years ago sounded like they could do something like that, but since it hasn't happened yet, I'm not optimistic.
@GuyinPA75 yeah i agree not a fan of the PS controllers in general. But WOW that Starfield Xbox controller is INSANE!!
I bought the 512GB Seagate for my Series S and it has been plenty for a secondary system to my PC. I mainly got the S for nostalgia (only way to play Fable 2 and Too Human for some reason).
Thank you for the detailed response, @NEStalgia. I guess I have two options; firstly, hope they bring out a propriety splitter, or maybe a bigger hard-drive (4tb or more). though I imagine that would be eye-wateringly expensive right now....
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