Xbox Series X SSD – Speedy Storage at What Cost?

It’s been a busy press cycle for the Xbox team at Microsoft – from the console reveal earlier this month to Games Pass X Ea Play there’s been a ton to talk about; if you need some catching up, Joel and Ben go over it all in ep. 54 of the Final Checkpoint podcast.

With next-gen hardware finally making its way into the hands of reviewers (here’s hoping ours got lost in the mail? ), the details around the console’s expandable SSD storage are becoming more available. With so much speculation around the Xbox Series SSD pricing, size, and availability it’s great to finally have some concrete information for those of us who know we’ll quickly eat through the console’s initial storage at launch.

How Much Storage Do The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series Come With?

Both Xbox Series consoles will launch with built-in storage:

• Xbox Series X Storage: 1TB Custom NVMe SSD
• Xbox Series S Storage: 512GB Custom NVMe SSD

Microsoft touts its new Xbox Velocity Architecture as being the catalyst to help the console deliver “a massive leap in performance and reduction in load times” while making it “seamless to bring the large libraries of Xbox games you’ve already downloaded forward.”

How Much Will the Xbox Series X/S SSD Cost?

A listing that popped up on the Best Buy site (via Eurogamer) has the drive available for preorder for $219.99. This price may seem steep but it’s on par with other gen 4 NVMe drives for desktops. Current listings on Amazon for a gen 4 NVMe drive show a price of $199.99. Sony talked about being able to upgrade the storage on the PS5 with off the shelf gen 4 drives so there won’t be much of a difference there. There hasn’t been much more information from Sony on the process and how storage upgrades will work on their system but we are sure the process will be simple.

With the size of these next-gen games, the internal hard drives are sure to fill up quickly, so what is the workaround? Well, with Xbox, external hard drives can still be used but not with new games. For now, users can put all of their old games on an external 3.0 drive and they will run fine. In order to take full advantage of the speed and power of the console certain games are still required to be installed on the internal drive. Hopefully, the internal drive will last at least until early next year since there aren’t too many next-gen titles coming to either console this holiday.

We knew that this next generation would come with some costs. For those who work in IT, we’re sure you have heard of the Speed, Cost, and Quality theory. One point on this triangle will suffer in order to achieve the other two. Over time, we are sure the prices will come down but for now, speed and quality come at a premium.

Follow us on Twitter for more information. We’ll update you with more details as we find out.