Microsoft has decided to drop the price for the expansion cards made by Seagate for the Xbox Series X/S consoles. This isn’t just a sale though as these are the new official price points they will be available for, making expanded storage for these consoles a little more affordable.
This is something that the company needed badly. Thanks to Sony’s PS5 being able to take advantage of normal NVMe drives vs a proprietary format, expanded storage for the PS5 has been a bit more affordable in comparison, giving it an advantage over the Xbox. With these new price changes, both consoles will be a little bit more comparable (when it comes to storage at least), and consumers may be more willing to take advantage of them.
As for the pricing, these drives are available in three different capacity options, Including 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. Their new prices are $89.99, $149.99, and $279.99. For example, the 1TB model started at $219.99. So that makes for a $70 price drop. All of which were confirmed by Microsoft as being at their new lower prices via a tweet.
Much of this is likely thanks to the recent price drops NVMe has experienced in recent months. Making it a bit harder for Microsoft (or Seagate) to compete. Not only that, but Western Digital has its own expansion cards coming to the market soon, making room for some competition (finally).
That being said, the price of NVMe is still noticeably less than these new prices (and there are more options to choose from when it comes to brand and model). Making NVMe a bit more appealing still when compared to these expansion cards (thus making the PS5 console more appealing when it comes to expandable storage).
The 2TB Seagate Xbox Expansion Card is now $279.99, while the average PS5-compatible 2TB NVMe is less than $200. In fact, you can get an WD_Black 2TB SN850X NVMe for just $150 at the time of writing this. Which is the same price as the 1TB Xbox Expansion Card.
So the price may have come down noticeably, but that still doesn’t make them just as affordable as the alternative options. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying PS5 is better than the Xbox overall (or vice versa). My opinions on this one are completely neutral and price-driven. It just feels that Microsoft and Seagate could do better if they really wanted expanded storage to be a popular trend.
