A cheaper 1TB Xbox Series expansion card is on the way

A new 1TB Western Digital Expansion Card for Xbox series consoles has appeared online, and it’s much cheaper than its competitors.

The “WD_BLACK C50 Expansion Card for Xbox” appeared over the weekend on Best Buy’s website, however, it is currently unavailable for purchase. The item would expand the storage of an Xbox Series console by 1TB.

When the Xbox Series consoles first launched in 2020, they brought with them a proprietary memory card system, in order to expand the storage of the machines.

At launch, a 1TB, 2TB, and 512GB card, manufactured by Seagate was offered. This new card will seemingly set players back $179.99 (around £145). This is significantly cheaper than Microsoft‘s 1TB offering, which retails for $220, although it is rarely in stock.

While both Series consoles offer other forms of memory expansion, or the ability to store games on third-party hard drives, what makes the expansion card system unique is that it’s fully compatible with Xbox’s Quick Resume feature, meaning that games can be stored in a playable state directly on the expansion cards, rather than typical USB hard drives which instead store the games in “cold storage”.

This means that while you can store games on typical USB drives, you have to copy them into the system’s internal storage, or one of these expansion cards in order to play Xbox Series games. Older titles can run natively from the harddrive.

For comparison, PlayStation 5 storage expansion uses generic hard drives that have been produced by multiple manufacturers.

While this means that generally, the prices for these expansions are lower than on Xbox, inconsistent performance between hard drives means that some consumer research is required before purchases, unlike Microsoft’s “plug-and-play” solution.