The still outrageous SSD external storage price for Series X|S

SSD prices have been dropping considerably over the last 12 months. Just look at the Samsung 980 Pro 2TB Gen 4 NVME on the UK Amazon site. £140 quid for 2TB, that's also compatible with PS5

Then you've got this travesty. Still a whopping £204 for a 1TB 'Expansion Card' on the Series X|S. Comparatively, an absolute rip off, and still no competing drive manufacturer.

I've got 2 Gen 4 NVME drives in my PC, a 1TB and a 2TB along with an external 2TB drive connected to my motherboard's USB C port.

Obviously, the prices of NVME 2280 M.2 drives are pretty good value now. But if you're an Xbox owner, oh dear.

Thoughts system warriors....

It's like Sony learned from the PS Vita memory card issues where it would only use their proprietary cards......

And MS was like HEY PROPRIETARY MEDIA SOUNDS like a great idea!

Why would you need extra storage on an xbox? It has no games.

Yep, too much. Isn’t it going to open up to more manufacturers soon? I’m waiting for Western Digital myself. Hopefully that’ll help lower the price.

Yup saw this coming. It's one of my complaints of the XSX/S. Pointless custom memory card to expand storage. It just creates waste. There was no need for it.

It' not like the Xbox SSD is even especially fast or anything. In terms of value for money it's a complete rip off.

Hopefully MS dump it in a future hardware revision, or at least add a slot for an NVME drive too in the console.

It would also be good if Sony make it a bit easier to install in the PS5 in a future revision too (not that it's too difficult or anything).

Your pricing OP is a bit off.

That said, it is still too high.

Everyone saw it coming, weird decision on their side. Having said that I always struggle to understand how people run out of storage on their consoles.

Cause consoles have no games?😉

@Pedro said:

Your pricing OP is a bit off.

That said, it is still too high.

Remember, I'm British lol

I think UK Store 'Game' Has them for about £170, which is a little better, but still way high considering you can still get 2TB for a PS5 and PC for £30 less! in the UK the 2TB is going for around £339!!!

I know you all tend to pay more. Note, I am not disagreeing that it is too high.😊

Proprietary was and always will be a mistake. But it’s a good sign that prices are coming down. I have a couple Series X consoles and a Series S that still need memory expansion. Only my ”main” Xbox has a card installed at the moment

They disabled the use of third party adapters. 😐😑

Yeah, proprietary add ons are the poop. I'm pretty happy with the capacity of my series x, but would be nice to have more options for other storage.

paying more for slower drives, nobody could have seen this coming

I had even more fun slapping my own ultra cheap 980 white label and a cool but fitting heatsink into the PS5 than I ever would buying overpriced peripherals.

Well according to lems, MS likes to give their players a choice. Either pay price for a 1tb or stick with what they currently have 🤣

Do things work differently then Xbox One?

I bought an external SSD in like 2019 that i used on my one X, and have since upgraded to a series x. Is that SSD not going to be compatible with the SX?

This proves Sony made the right decision regarding storage. I only got a 1tb storage card because I had a few Amazon gift cards I had to use. Got a 1tb wd black sn850 for 120 for my ps5.

I'm outraged I tell you what, Outraged.

Well, not really, I'm not a raging cow. lol :P

Same boat. That would seem to be an issue for people that share consoles. Although, when I lived at home and gamed a ton I could see it being an issue for that phase of my life.

You could buy a television at that price. Jeez.

Not exactly proprietary. They're CFExpress cards. But these ones are faster, bigger and cheaper than the average CFExpress card, so in that way, they are proprietary.

The point of them was the plug and play nature and the easy installation. The trade off was the price.

So right now, a 256GB 1700MB/s CFExpress card can range from £150 to £300 plus. So the 1TB 3000MB/s CFExpress cards for the Xbox Series, in this context is not unreasonable. However, it's still not really an appropriate price range for this particular consumer market.

In theory, CFExpress suits the nature of consoles. In reality, the price unfortunately just doesn't gel. But I think the problem with the price is not technology based.

The pro grade CFExpress cards are expensive because they're pro hardware which isn't in high demand. The problem with the price of the Xbox Series CFExpress cards, is the lack of competition in manufacturing them, with only Seagate doing it. I think in that sense the issue is the customised nature of the Xbox Series CFExpress cards. Seagate probably developed it for MS. And with only them making it, the price isn't coming down enough.

I'm slowly trying to replace all my SSD drives in favor of NVME just by going 2TB for my PC. Anyway, it's crazy to think MS thought it was a good idea to start ripping people off when Sony had a better solution. I hope MS fixed that whenever they're ready to ship out those mid-gen upgrades.

I have my Seagate 2TB from the XB1 attached to my Series X, and have been able to play all but 2 games from it.

I have over 70 games installed on it and works fine, so no need to buy the Series specific ones for the highway robbery prices they're asking for them.

One of the many reasons why so many of us choose to game primarily (not exclusively) in PC: the opportunity to be reliably free of proprietary technologies and peripherals that only serve to enrich the hardware manufacturers as they try to claw back the losses they usually take on the console hardware sales.

While Sony did us a solid with regular NVMe drives this gen and the last couple of gens, in the past they too had proprietary hardware for storage (PS1, PS2, Vita). Nintendo, of course, always has proprietary hardware. And everyone in the console space makes sure to add on proprietary controllers to make sure you spend $60-$200 unnecessarily so that you have an extra compatible controller or racing wheel for the new gen hardware even though there is often no real gaming imperative that can explain older controllers not also working. Controllers are an example of that eternal console money-grab, along with paid online gaming which is just absolutely embarrassing in 2023. Where on PC you can use any controller that has ever existed on any console at long as it has a USB interface or can be modified to have one. You can use a PS3, Switch, Xbox, or any other controller to play Returnal or God of War on PC. 20 years from now, if your PS3 controller still works, you'll *still* be able to use it to play the newest games on PC if you choose to. No dongles or mods needed, which is something you *already* can't say about the PS family. And online remains free forever, as it should have always been. To say nothing of the reliable hardware and software discounts across the dozens of PC key stores.

So yea, just another reminder that proprietary hardware sucks. While Sony is doing less of it now, they still do it with their controllers and VR headsets and Nintendo is the worst offender of the bunch. For-profit companies gonna for-profit.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

If you half-ass it and get a console, well, you better be ready to pay out the ass at later points for proprietary hardware since you willingly entered into a walled garden, more or less.

It's kind of like if you buy Mac/Apple stuff. No, you can't use any ol' charger, you have to get the special one that's twice as expensive and whose cable frays after two months. But at least it looks cool, right?

Should just get a PC 😁

most ps5 users .

wont put a m.2 into their ps5.

its to hard for them

Western Digital now has expansion cards for Series X|S. If only this happened sooner rather than this late.

Indeed. While cheaper, they're still at least 50 to 60% more expensive than a same spec PC (or PS5 compatible) NVME drive. Still, it's a start.