While Microsoft has also discussed storage from other manufacturers, the ongoing exclusivity period with Seagate means we're yet to see those materialize. Seagate Storage Expansion Cards are available in 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB flavors, with pricing proportional to their respective capacities. The Xbox Expansion Card makes it simple, with three sizes available in 2021. Traditional USB external hard drives don't hit the mark, which saw Microsoft and Seagate cook up a custom 'Storage Expansion Card.' In short, it's a proprietary, high-speed SSD that's guaranteed to meet the standards for Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. With Xbox Series X and Series S focused on delivering next-gen experiences, games designed for the consoles require the full bandwidth of their custom SSD technologies. Here's a handy breakdown of how USB drives compare to the SSD expansion card. However, backward-compatible titles, including Xbox One, Xbox 360, and original Xbox games, work fine on USB drives.

While USB hard drives work fine, they only store those games, and you will need to transfer them to the SSD to play. Beyond the internal SSD included with Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, the official Xbox Storage Expansion Card is the only seamless upgrade. In brief, the growing list of Xbox Series X and Series S Optimized games need high-speed storage, and only Microsoft's custom SSDs can deliver. It also supports USB external hard drives like Xbox One consoles, albeit with major limitations. The best solution is the Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S, a compact memory card-style SSD developed in collaboration with Seagate, mimicking the internal SSD with identical performance. When your games library eventually fills the internal drive, Microsoft provides two primary routes to increase your available storage on Xbox Series X and Series S.

With new releases from franchises like Call of Duty, Halo, and NBA 2K now surpassing 100GB, it's easier than ever to outgrow the included storage. In reality, Xbox Series X has just 802GB of space usable for games, with Xbox Series S offering just 364GB. The Xbox Series X ships with a 1TB internal SSD drive, while the Xbox Series S features a reduced 512GB capacity out of the box. Microsoft opted for a custom solution based on NVMe SSD technologies, delivering best-in-class read and write speeds, albeit costly compared to the slower hard drives from the Xbox One era. Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S pack the same SSD storage, bringing up to 40 times speed increases over older Xbox One consoles.

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