Microsoft"s upcoming Xbox consoles, the Series X and S, are the company"s first to come with internal SSDs for storage, but not only that, they"re using what Microsoft calls the Xbox Velocity Architecture. With technologies like DirectStorage and Sampler Feedback Streaming, the internal SSD offers speeds up to 2.4GB/s for raw data, but Microsoft is also giving users the ability to expand that storage with new custom external SSDs that match the speeds of the internal drive, and now, we know how much they"ll cost.
Seagate"s 1TB Game Drive for the Xbox Series X and S has gone up for pre-order on Best Buy, and it comes with a $219.99 price tag. This is a PCIe Gen4 x2 SSD, and considering the 1TB capacity, it"s not too far off from standard SSDs with similar specs. However, the Xbox Series S ships with a smaller 512GB SSD inside, and it doesn"t support discs, so there"s a good chance you"ll need to spend those extra $219.99 on top of the console"s price, bringing the total cost north of $500.
You can also use traditional external drives to expand your storage, be it an SSD or HDD, but games designed for Xbox Series X and S won"t run from these slower drives. You can only use these to carry your games from previous generations.
Just like the console itself and other accessories, the new Game Drive is set to ship on November 10, so you can pre-order it today to get it at launch.