Seagate’s 1TB storage expansion card for Xbox Series X and Series S consoles will be available in India from February 8 at a price of Rs 23,499 — for a limited period, it will be available with a ‘promo’ price of Rs 22,999 though. For those unaware, the Xbox Series X and Series S support custom or proprietary cards for storage expansion. Only Seagate is making them for now with Microsoft still to confirm if there will be any more partners.
You can play older titles (and archive new ones) off any USB storage, on the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles, but do keep in mind that this will come at the cost of losing out on all the next-gen gains. “Designed in collaboration with Microsoft, the Seagate expansion card for Xbox Series X|S is the only external storage device that enables users to achieve the same performance as the Xbox Velocity Architecture when playing games that have been optimised for next-generation of Xbox consoles,” Seagate said in a press release.
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Seagate’s storage expansion card for Xbox Series X and Series S has been a long time coming. Both the consoles were launched in India on November 10, though it has been extremely difficult to catch a hold of them since the first round of sales. In the meanwhile, Sony has also – finally – launched the PlayStation 5 in India which, like the new Xbox consoles, also supports expandable storage with the only difference that it supports expandable storage with regular NVMe PC drives which are easier to find and, more affordable.
That is just how proprietary tech is. You basically pay ‘extra’ for its one-of-its-kind experience. Both the Xbox Series X and Series S have a dedicated slot – that is more accessible – for the Seagate storage expansion card, while the PS5 requires some manual assembly for expansion. Then again, the PS5 does not support storage expansion yet – this will come in future update, Sony has confirmed.
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Storage expansion makes a lot of sense in the case of the Series S since Microsoft’s ‘lite’ next-gen console comes with only a 512GB SSD of which only 364GB is usable. But the Series S costs Rs 34,990 in India which means, buying a Series X (that costs Rs 49,990) will – obviously – make more sense. For some context, the same storage expansion card costs $220 (roughly Rs 16,200) in the US, which is again not cheap by any means. In the bigger scheme of things, the Seagate storage expansion card will ‘actually’ make more sense for Series X owners for future-proofing their next-gen console.
Seagate’s 1TB storage expansion card for Xbox Series X and Series S consoles seems to be an Amazon India exclusive at launch. Between February 8 and 14, you can even get it at a discounted price.
