Western Digital’s Xbox Series X|S Expansion Cards Start at $79.99

Xbox Series X|S owners can finally purchase storage expansion cards from a different manufacturer than Seagate. Western Digital is launching two expansion cards for Xbox Series X|S consoles today that start at $79.99 for the 500GB model (via The Verge).

Seagate recently dropped the price of its own Xbox storage expansion cards, which now start at $89.99 for the 500GB model. Western Digital’s 500GB card is $10 cheaper at $79.99, however, the 1TB version is priced at $149.99, just like the Seagate card.

While that’s still quite expensive to expand the storage of an Xbox Series X or Series S console, let’s keep in mind that Seagate’s 1TB expansion card was originally launched at $219.99 in the US. The company later launched a 2TB version at $399.99, which is now priced at $279.99.

Both the Seagate and Western Digital Xbox expansion cards use the same proprietary format, and their performance matches the internal SSD of Xbox Series X|S consoles. While it’s still possible to install current-gen Xbox games on external USB 3.0 SSDs, these games need to be moved to the internal drive or a storage expansion card to launch properly.

It’s too bad we had to wait for almost 3 years to see another manufacturer than Seagate launches its own Xbox expansion cards, but it’s good to finally have some competition. And even though these Xbox storage expansion cards are not as cheap as regular M2 SSDs, the seamless plug-and-play experience is definitely more consumer-friendly.