Xbox Series X and Series S expandable storage available for pre-order — but it's not cheap

While the size of next-gen games relative to the size of built-in SSDs in next-gen consoles is a bit concerning, both Sony and Microsoft established early on that their respective hardware would support expandable storage options. 

With the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, that expandable storage comes in the form of Seagate Storage Expansion Cards, which have finally been made available for pre-order at $219 for 1TB (via BGR).

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That's $80 shy of the price of the Xbox Series S itself, which is the most likely to experience space problems because it has only a 512GB SSD. We questioned whether buying an external drive would make sense for Series S owners when support was first announced. As we suspected, this pricing makes the Xbox Series X a better value for space-hungry gamers especially with its additional power and 1TB hard drive for $20 less than the Series S with an expansion card.

That said, you would have a combined 1.5TB of storage with the Xbox Series S plus this expansion card, so it isn't an apples-to-apples comparison, but it's worth considering. Microsoft also said games on the Series S will take up about 30% less space than those on Series X, so if you are a real game hoarder who doesn't want to deal with reinstalling, then this external SSD could be an enticing option.

While the pricing isn't going to be great news for gamers, it isn't particularly shocking given the performance needs of these SSDs. Let's just hope most people won't need the additional storage right out of the box. 

Over on the PS5 side of things, the expandable storage options remain more of a question mark with compatible M.2 NVMe SSDs not coming until after the launch of the PS5 in November. We'll have to see wait and see whether the grass is greener on Sony's side.