Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S

[HEXUS]

Pricey but effective.

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[jimbouk]

Any chance of taking it apart to see what all the extra bucks get you, aside from the price of vendor lock in? The very similar load times on older titles makes you feel like it's a very artificial block...

And I wonder how locked down these are? Will there be an unofficial adapter for standard drives?

[Yoyoyo69]

These devices have been a disaster so far, I'm not sure why they haven't attracted more negative publicity.

The underlying tech is a good move, but locking it down like this is something I'd expect of Sony, especially at the cost sold at.

[cheesemp]

Any chance of taking it apart to see what all the extra bucks get you, aside from the price of vendor lock in? The very similar load times on older titles makes you feel like it's a very artificial block...

And I wonder how locked down these are? Will there be an unofficial adapter for standard drives?

See - https://venturebeat.com/2020/10/15/x...card-teardown/

I believe someone got a CFExpress adaptor to work when using one of the NVMe drives from another xbox but its not currently a good idea IMO. Personally I'm waiting for Seagates 1 year exclusive deal with Microsoft to end so we can get some competition and other models available. Game pass puts massive demands on storage. (I've seen these cards hit £150 occasionally and that feels fair for a custom 1tb NVMe - £220 does not)

Edit: A 500Mb model has been long rumoured too.

[QuorTek]

It has one flaw... it is the brand Seagate... never had any positive with those.

[jimbouk]

Personally I'm waiting for Seagates 1 year exclusive deal with Microsoft to end so we can get some competition and other models available.

Well that explains everything!

[Terbinator]

Any chance of taking it apart to see what all the extra bucks get you, aside from the price of vendor lock in? The very similar load times on older titles makes you feel like it's a very artificial block...

TBF for FM7 there have been no changes to the game to make it specifically Gen9/SSD aware and I *think* even FH4 can be played off of a non-SSD external with the Series update applied.

[daddacool]

This is often around the £145-£150 mark delivered from various European Amazon sites, which makes it competitive with PCIE 4.0 standalone drives.

[Syphadeus]

Considering the RRP of a Series S is £249.99, this seems marvellously poor value for money, even if you can get the thing for £150.

I realise that consoles are produced at a loss for the first few years until manufacturing processes are streamlined, yields increase (and you don't have a silicon shortage going about). But still. It doesn't make sense for the S console to purchase more storage at these prices.

If you're going to go the 'budget' route of an S console to begin with then surely it is better to simply have your couple or three games that you're playing on the reg installed on the machine and to swap out, though time consuming and less convenient.

If you're plonking down £400 for an S and a storage upgrade, you've denied yourself a console that's an order of magnitude more powerful for the sake of around £50.

Simply put, I cannot see a situation in which this makes financial sense.

[jimbouk]

Simply put, I cannot see a situation in which this makes financial sense.

It's not meant to, to it's the same old scam pulled over and over again. Once you've paid the entry price to get you in the door you can't leave. PS Vita memory cards were the most recent in this genre, 'bespoke' console memory has never been cheap. They could have gone down the Apple route and had a base model that couldn't store enough to be practical and then horrific margins on the extra memory models, but if you hide the actual cost of ownership until after purchase them there's more chance of getting the original sale in a competitive market.