Xbox confirms 2TB and 512GB Series X/S storage expansion cards

Xbox and Seagate have announced that two new storage expansion cards are coming to Xbox Series X/S.

The current $220 1TB card will soon be joined by a 512GB card for $140 and a 2TB card for $400.

The 512GB card will launch in the United States in mid-November while the 2TB card will follow in early December. Information on release and pricing in other regions has yet to be announced at the time of writing.

Promotional material that leaked earlier this month led to expectations that a 512GB expansion card was set to be announced, offering players a cheaper option to expand their storage without having to buy a 1TB card for $220.

However, these leaks didn’t mention the possibility of an even larger expansion card being announced.

The Seagate expansion card is currently the only way to expand the console’s storage for native Series X/S games.

Xbox One and backwards compatible Xbox 360 and Xbox games can still be stored on an external USB drive, but they can’t run Series X/S games because their read/write speeds are far slower than the console’s internal SSD.

This is particularly problematic for Xbox Series S owners, as the console only has slightly more than 350GB of storage due to system files.

In an Xbox blog posted last year, Xbox director of program management Jason Ronald explained why the 1TB Seagate expansion card was so expensive.

“The Xbox Velocity Architecture is a key innovation of our next generation consoles, delivering unprecedented speed and performance enabling transformative gaming experiences never before possible on console,” he claimed.

“This level of consistent, sustained performance requires advanced components which comes at a higher cost than traditional hard drives or SSDs often found in PCs.

“By partnering with an industry leader in Seagate, we worked together to deliver an expandable storage solution which delivers identical performance at the lowest cost possible and available this holiday.”

Last month a Chinese modder claimed to have converted an internal SSD into an external clone of the Seagate expansion card, and theorised that other non-proprietary SSDs could work too.