It has already been two years since the 9th generation consoles were released. Whether it’s Microsoft’s Xbox Series X|S or Sony’s PlayStation 5, the latest home consoles have never looked so good, their games never looked so good, but they never weighed so much. heavy in terms of storage. A problem that is particularly expensive today on Xbox.
Storage on Xbox Series X|S, an ever-delicate question
All owners of Xbox Series X|S have already found themselves in this situation. You know, this situation in which you have to choose which game to delete on your console to accommodate a good big RPG that is close to your heart or to install the latest battle royale to date (we are not targeting any FPS in particular). What to do when more and more games exceed 100 GB on the internal storage of your machine and an internet connection is now essential to install any game?
For several years, the weight of the games has continued to grow, which is regularly observed on several recent titles.
- Microsoft Flight Simulator : 144,9 Go
- Forza Horizon 5 : 129,5 Go
- Red Dead Redemption 2 : 123,4 Go
- Call of Duty Modern Warfare II : 116,4 Go
- The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt – Complete Edition : 57,7 Go
- Chivalry 2 : 22,6 Go
- FIFA 23 : 46,1 Go
As you may have already realized, it’s easy to run out of storage on your Xbox without realizing it, especially since the Xbox Game Pass exists and it’s easy to access many games and install them. Between the usable 802GB of the Xbox Series X or the usable 364GB of the Xbox Series S, you’ll agree that the list of games to keep is filling up fast.
Of course, not all players have the same consumption of video games, not all have the Xbox Game Pass and it is always possible to sort easily to keep only the games that you are actually playing at the moment. T (provided you have a good connection). Nevertheless, installing your games to be able to play them easily and quickly remains a basic need that should be for all players. And it is unfortunately at this level that Microsoft’s offer falls short.
Increasing storage on Xbox Series X|S: it’s all white or all black
As you probably know, there are not many solutions at the moment to increase the storage of your Xbox Series X|S:
- Sorting and uninstalling games
- Use an external HDD with a USB 3.0 port
- Use a Seagate storage expansion card
Suffice to say that following spending a good amount on one of Microsoft’s two consoles, it is normal to be reluctant to spend a hundred euros (or even two or three) on a storage device. additional. The USB 3.0 external HDD solution remains one of the most common, but does not allow you to run Xbox Series X|S optimized games. The possibilities are therefore very limited today when all the games that come out are optimized for the new consoles.
Indeed, it is possible to use an external disk (and even several) via the USB ports of your console. The latter must be formatted for this specific use and you can then store your games on it and transfer them to the internal SSD. Only Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One games can be launched from the external hard drive.
If the SSD of your Xbox Series X|S is full and you want to install and launch a game optimized for this console, then you only have one solution left, the Seagate storage card.
The Seagate card, an expensive device and still without any other alternative today
- Carte SSD Seagate pour Xbox Series X et S
It was in 2020, shortly before the Xbox Series X|S was released, that Seagate introduced its officially licensed Xbox storage expansion card. Despite some slight fluctuations over the past two years, the prices of the three existing versions have remained around the same ranges and here is what it is currently:
- Carte d’extension de stockage Seagate 512 Go : 179,99€
- Carte d’extension de stockage Seagate 1 To : 234,99€
- Carte d’extension de stockage Seagate 2 To : 489,88€
Such prices are explained by the fact that these cards use the same foundations as the Xbox Velocity Architecture and therefore allow you to enjoy the same performance as when a game is installed on the internal storage of the console.
That being said, the prices on offer are no less impressive. The price of the Seagate 1 TB storage expansion card is almost the same (or even higher) than that of an Xbox Series S alone, the same is true for the price of the 2 TB storage expansion card which is close to that of an Xbox Series S. Xbox Series X. It even becomes more interesting to buy an additional Xbox Series S and exploit its 521 GB for a similar price, or even less than that of a 1 TB card.
Additional storage costs 2x less on PS5
All this is all the more frustrating as Sony, on the other hand, offers more varied and open solutions to increase the storage of a PlayStation 5. The SSD of the PS5 has 825 GB, but 667 GB is actually usable. When we look at the possibilities offered by a PS5 today, the solutions are more numerous, but also cheaper than on Xbox:
- Sorting and uninstalling games (a timeless classic)
- Use an external SSD or HDD with USB-A or USB-C (without being able to run next-gen games on it)
- Use a FAT or exFAT formatted USB drive to store PS4 save data and captures
- Install an additional SSD via the dedicated expansion port
And yes, if the first solutions may seem classic, the last one is surely the most interesting of all. Since September 2021, Sony has effectively made it possible to exploit the expansion port present in the PS5. Certain constraints must still be respected to integrate an additional SSD into your PS5.
It must be a PCIe Gen4 or later compatible M.2 NVMe SSD, with a read speed of at least 5500MB/s and it must of course respect the dimensions of the slot in the PS5. This technique is approved and explained by Sony on the brand’s website, with several explanations that show how to disassemble your console and add an additional SSD to it.
In terms of cost, buying an M.2 NVMe SSD made by a third-party manufacturer is cheaper. As an example, the Samsung 980 PRO Series SSD now costs €120 for 1 TB and €230 for 2 TB.
The calculations are fast, adding storage on PS5 today costs half as much on PS5 compared to Xbox Series X|S. When the new Xboxes were launched, Microsoft promised to “Offer more choices to players” than Seagate cards, but two years later, players are still waiting for the end of this monopoly. Many of you report this point to us regularly on social networks or our Discord server, count on us to keep you informed if new options were to arrive.
- Miicrosoft Communication in 2020
