Here's How Much Xbox Series X/S Extra Storage Costs

Xbox Series X and Series S preorders went live earlier this week in messy fashion, and while we've known the price of the consoles themselves--$500 and $300, respectively--the ability to order accessories is shedding some light on how much we can expect accessories like extra storage to cost. Both next-gen Xbox consoles use a proprietary Seagate storage solution in order to deliver the required speeds, and it won't come cheap.

In the US, the Xbox Series X/S solid state drive is priced at $220 (£220 in the UK), which Microsoft confirmed in an Xbox Wire post. Given these drives are NVMe SSDs, which tend to be on the expensive side, so this isn't an especially surprising price.

Addressing why the price is so high, Xbox director of program management Jason Ronald explained, "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. 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."

That extra storage will effectively double the 1TB storage space of the Series X, and triple that of the 512GB Series S. (The precise amount of usable space on either system has not yet been revealed.) Notably, the series S is an all-digital console whereas the Series X has a disc drive. But file sizes for Series S games will also be significantly smaller, at least in some cases, due to the system not outputting at 4K resolution.

Seagate 1TB SSD for Series X/S

$220

See at Best Buy

Standard external hard drives will work to an extent on Series X and S. You'll be able to play backwards compatible games from any external drive, and you can even store Series X and Series S games on one. However, any Series X/S games that you want to play will need to be moved to either the internal storage or one of these pricey Seagate SSDs. PS5 is expected to work similarly, although you'll have a wider array of external storage devices that support PS5 games--though they will need to meet certain physical size and speed requirements.

Both versions of the next-gen Xbox are also available through Xbox All Access, a payment plan that bundles in Xbox Game Pass. That subscription service will soon include EA Play, and thanks to Microsoft's latest acquisition, it will include Bethesda games.

For more details on how to reserve an Xbox Series X or Series S ahead of their November 10 release date, check out our Xbox Series X and Series S preorder guide.

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