With games getting bigger file sizes, the internal storage of consoles can very easily fill up. Fortunately, a new leak reveals a cheap expansion card slot for the Xbox Series S and X is coming.
A new 1TB expansion card for the Xbox Series consoles has leaked online. The "WD_BLACK C50 Expansion Card for Xbox" was listed on Best Buy’s website over the weekend.
The expansion card listing was spotted by Wario64 on Twitter. However, the listing has already been removed from the retailer’s site as of writing.
WD - WD_BLACK C50 1TB Expansion Card for Xbox Series coming soon, listed at Best Buy ($179.99) https://t.co/mZmGIykugn pic.twitter.com/J6usvUsDLV
— Wario64 (@Wario64) April 2, 2023
The new WD_Black C50 expands the current generation Xbox console’s storage by 1TB. Out of the box, the Xbox Series X comes with a 1TB SSD while the Series S only has 500GB of internal storage.
The leak revealed that the new expansion card from Western Digital will retail for $179.99. The official Xbox Expansion Card made by Seagate is priced at $220 for the 1TB variant. Seagate also offers a 2TB variant for $360.
Prices for the official Seagate expansion cards have remained high since the newest Xbox consoles launched in 2020. Interestingly, Sony has opted to reduce the cost of its expansion storage for the PS5.
The WD_BLACK C50 Expansion Card shares the same industrial aesthetic as other Western Digital products. The WD_Black is also the flagship variant of many WD storage devices.
The new expansion card sports the same plug-and-play functionality as its official Seagate counterpart. Gamers simply insert the card in the expansion card slot on the Xbox console to increase their storage space.
Players can opt to use a cheaper external hard drive to store games on the Xbox Series console. However, you cannot play Xbox Series X/S titles directly from the external hard drive and will need to transfer them to the console’s SSD or an official expansion card. This means that only Xbox One games can be launched from the external drive.
Western Digital has not yet released details on the WD_BLACK C50 Expansion Card. It is also unclear if WD will release other storage variants for the expansion card.
The $50 reduction in price will surely attract a lot of Xbox Series X/S owners to the third-party option. Hopefully, the new expansion cards from Western Digital will lower the cost of the storage options across the board for the Xbox.
