Game sizes are getting larger with each new AAA release, and the struggle to have enough storage space for your favorite titles is an uphill battle that we all know much too well. It appears that Best Buy, however, is giving us gamers a helping hand by slashing prices on the Seagate storage expansion cards for the Xbox Series X|S. This storage expansion card typically costs around $400 for the 2TB version but right now it is available with a $120 discount for just $280. The 1TB version of the Seagate storage expansion card typically sits at $220 MSRP but is currently available for $70 on both Best Buy and Amazon making it just a mere $150.
One of the biggest sources of contention for fans of Xbox this generation has been how the platform has handled the need for additional storage in the Xbox Series X|S consoles. Xbox chose convenience and ease of use when it came to this department, opting to create proprietary memory cards capable of m.2 read and write speeds that featured plug and play functionality. However, Xbox also partnered with Seagate for exclusivity with creating these proprietary cards and thus the price of them has been much higher than standard m.2 drives found elsewhere on the market.
The pricing and exclusionary nature of the storage expansion cards was especially problematic considering that Xbox Series X|S optimized titles required the SSD space, either from the internal storage or the external add-on cards. Backward compatible titles from the Xbox One, Xbox 360 and original Xbox are capable of being stored and played from any add on HDD or SSD, but Xbox Series X|S titles could only be stored on these older storage options and would need to be moved to a supported m.2 SSD in order to be playable.
Xbox and Seagate's exclusive agreement for the proprietary storage cards does seem to have come to an end as there are now Western Digital storage cards for the Xbox Series X|S on the market. These are considerably cheaper than the Seagate counterparts. This price cut from Best Buy and Amazon does, however, make the 1TB option of the Seagate drive the same price as the Western Digital cards—at least temporarily.
If you're on the fence about whether or not now is the time to add a storage expansion card to your Xbox Series X|S, you can check out our review of the Seagate storage expansion card to help make up your mind. We also took a look at the Western Digital storage expansion card. Xbox also announced during the 2023 Xbox Games Showcase a brand-new all black Xbox Series S console that features an expanded 1TB internal SSD for just $50 more than the 512GB version that is still on the market.
