Xbox Series S takes on PS5 Digital Edition with this MUST-HAVE feature

(Image credit: Microsoft)

published 13 September 2020

Earlier this week Microsoft officially revealed the Xbox Series S – a smaller, sleeker, and more affordable console than the Xbox Series X, that makes a few sacrifices to hit the $299/ £249 / AU$499 price point.

One of those areas is the hard drive, coming in at just 512GB. Considering that some 4K titles already take up over 100GB of space, and the fact that the all-digital Xbox Series S doesn’t have a disc drive, buyers might be wary of picking one up.

Thankfully there’s a solution to that potential problem, and it conjures up some memories of the good old days when consoles couldn’t save your progress without a bit of help.

Microsoft has announced that Seagate will be offering storage expansion cards for both the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. In other words they’re a 2020's take on the memory card; something that fell out of fashion during the early days of the Xbox 360.

The cards plug into the back of the console, adding 1TB of extra storage to your Xbox. Microsoft promises that they take advantage of “the full speed and performance of the Xbox Velocity Architecture”, meaning they should be just as fast and reliable as the internal SSD.

The downside is that there won’t support external hard drives plugged into the USB port. If your games aren’t on the internal hard drive or one of Seagate’s expansion cards, you won’t be able to play them.

There’s no word on a price or release date just yet – or on the Samsung 980 Pro SSD for the PS5 – but for gamers who prefer to keep things digital, don't want to fork out for the pricier Xbox Series X, this is a great option.

You’ll be able to pre-order the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S from September 22, ahead of their November 10 launch date, and we expect Seagate’s expansion cards to go on sale around the same time.

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