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Xbox Series X expansion card revealed

Three

Member
I think a lot of people dont get why some proprietary accessories cost more, its because they are made in limited quantities But in case of XSX they are repackaging the same hard drive that is present in Series X into a memory card, which is already being produced in bulk. This is why its only 1 TB. As the parts used to make XSX get cheaper, so will the memory card.
On the other hand, there is no demand for the 7 GB/s NVMe drive for PS5. Its like 128 GB RAM, no one is interested in it. The market for those NVMe drives which have to be inserted inside the PS5(how many people used Internal SSD in PS4?) is always smaller than XSX memory cards. By the time they actually get cheaper, the generation would have ended.
Proprietary accessories cost more because you can only buy that accessory and they make money from it with no competition. It's not because they produce them in limited quantities. The main parts from it are standard but made proprietary on purpose by the case or form factor. The drive may be cheaper than PS5 drives because it's half the speed but rest assured that the proprietary drive will cost more than the standard drive with the same specs.
 

Alx

Member
I'm not convinced by the concept of proprietary storage. As long as USB is supported, I'd rather use that and swap data with the internal SSD if necessary.
 

Dory16

Banned
Sony have already confirmed they support external USB-drives at least.
I vaguely remember Cerny saying we have to wait for a list of PS5 compatible SSDs and one of the constraints is there have to fit into the bay. Would he say that if we could just get any usb hard drive off the shelf?
 

ZywyPL

Banned
MS couldn't have done it any better IMO, it's basically a 1TB cartridge that will allow for the good old plug&play experience, that's exactly what people were hoping for when that Sony patent showed up, but unfortunately turned out not to be true, while MS surprisingly did actually made it happen.

Just imagine taking your whole game library to your friends just like that, by pulling out the card from the slot, and being able to play all the stored games right away, directly from the card! It just couldn't be any more simple and convenient.

I don't know if anyone noticed, but DF raised a concern about PS5 solution, as replacing the drive in PS4 requires a complete formatting, so not only you need a screwdriver to actually put the disk in and out, but all your data will be wiped out when you put your drive to someone else's console. So hopefully Sony with PS5 will follow the same path and will allow the expansion drives to be used across all the consoles out there, not just your own.

As for the price, nothing is know yet, but if anything, MS will have control over their own solution, as oppose to Sony who will be left on 3rd party vendors mercy, those 5TB/s drives, once they finally arrive, won't be chap, to say the least. Especially when they'll pass Sony's certification process, I bet the manufacturers will slap a "PS5 Ready" logo on them and bump the price even further.
 

longdi

Banned
MS couldn't have done it any better IMO, it's basically a 1TB cartridge that will allow for the good old plug&play experience, that's exactly what people were hoping for when that Sony patent showed up, but unfortunately turned out not to be true, while MS surprisingly did actually made it happen.

Just imagine taking your whole game library to your friends just like that, by pulling out the card from the slot, and being able to play all the stored games right away, directly from the card! It just couldn't be any more simple and convenient.

I don't know if anyone noticed, but DF raised a concern about PS5 solution, as replacing the drive in PS4 requires a complete formatting, so not only you need a screwdriver to actually put the disk in and out, but all your data will be wiped out when you put your drive to someone else's console. So hopefully Sony with PS5 will follow the same path and will allow the expansion drives to be used across all the consoles out there, not just your own.

As for the price, nothing is know yet, but if anything, MS will have control over their own solution, as oppose to Sony who will be left on 3rd party vendors mercy, those 5TB/s drives, once they finally arrive, won't be chap, to say the least. Especially when they'll pass Sony's certification process, I bet the manufacturers will slap a "PS5 Ready" logo on them and bump the price even further.

Yep! Thats how i feel and probably how Phil assessed their choices.

Nvme drives are still expensive, i doubt MS will overpriced them like good old proprietary cards. Just a bit higher, enough to cover some hardware costs, but affordable for core gamers who wants extra plug and play all around storage

Smart choice imo. It seems Series X is designed to fire out of the gates.
 
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xrnzaaas

Gold Member
29CJgmd.jpg


1994 ftw!
 

Gamernyc78

Banned
How the tune of proprietary vs open standard changes when It is someone’s console manufacturer of choice depending on it is interesting, but I will admit that being able to easily swap in and swap out external storage to be pretty neat... still having an open standard solution that allows you to buy any* third party drive of your choice (*as long as it is fast enough... which makes sense) to be superior.
This thread’s article seems to add nothing more than the DF article where the XSX innards where first revealed IIRC... are there any new details at all?

That didn't stop anyone from ragging on and bringing down one of the best handhelds ever, yup the Vita 🤦‍♂️Even fans weren't happy about the proprietary mem cards and their price.

The only way I'm Into proprietary stuff is if it adds some major advancement or feature, not to lock out competitors and inflate price.
 
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Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
Proprietary accessories cost more because you can only buy that accessory and they make money from it with no competition. It's not because they produce them in limited quantities. The main parts from it are standard but made proprietary on purpose by the case or form factor. The drive may be cheaper than PS5 drives because it's half the speed but rest assured that the proprietary drive will cost more than the standard drive with the same specs.
With such fierce competition on price, I doubt MS would make it expensive on purpose.
Take the 4TB Seagate Xbox One HDD. Currently it costs 119 USD on Amazon, while the STGX4000400 costs 98 USD. But the Xbox One drive(140 MB/s) is also slightly faster than STGX4000400(120 MB/s). This is not the kind of price difference some posts here are projecting.
On the other hand XSX Memory card contains the same mass produced Series X internal drive unlike the Xbox One HDD. I dont see any significant price difference. It also seems like MS wants the XSX memory card to be adopted by majority of Xbox users.
 
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Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
That didn't stop anyone from ragging on and bringing down one of the best handhelds ever, yup the Vita 🤦‍♂️Even fans weren't happy about the proprietary mem cards and their price.

The only way I'm Into proprietary stuff is if it adds some major advancement or feature, not to lock out competitors and inflate price.
Its a small portable memory card that you can just plug and play. You can take it and plug it to a friends Xbox. You cant do that with standard NVMe drives
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
As for the price, nothing is know yet, but if anything, MS will have control over their own solution, as oppose to Sony who will be left on 3rd party vendors mercy, those 5TB/s drives, once they finally arrive, won't be chap, to say the least. Especially when they'll pass Sony's certification process, I bet the manufacturers will slap a "PS5 Ready" logo on them and bump the price even further.

Bwahahaha.

I get it, we're in prime console warzz season and whatnot but rofl...

option a) Propietary Microsoft Drive: you are the mercy of microsoft who are free to price the storage as they will enabling them to implement storage tiered sales strategy as apple does. History shows propietary interfaces on standard components have always resulted in price gouging.

option b) Standard nvme interface on the PS5: Sony releases a list of compatible SSDS. You go to the market and find the cheapest drive from their list. Because these drives use an industry standard interface, you'll find vendors competing for price in the market. History shows that the absence of propietary storage ensures the largest availability and the lowest price since the user benefits from market forces.

And somehow, in a fit of fanboy logic you conclude that option a is the best one for the consumer.
 
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ANIMAL1975

Member
I think it's cute with memory cards. Takes me back to the old school-era of PSX / PS2. I hope Sony presents their own cards to.
I hope they don't, and keep supporting open standards like usb and PCIE (for the internal NVME).
It was revealed in the GDC presentation: external usb support for ps4 games, of course you can transfer them to ssd also, and take full advantage of the new stuff _ i will absolutely do it for the one or two games I'll be playing at the moment, it's a pretty rapid process and probably will be improved.
For ps5 games there's a Pcie-4 expansion slot, so no proprietary cards. Like Oddvintage said, Sony can still produce and sell it's own costumised NVMe for the expansion, and maybe even sell it for PC market _ because it would be still using standard pcie-4 Nand slots, not proprietary like XSX.


I think Series X implementation is a good solution for this gen.
Maybe 5 years down, with Series X-ii, MS can switch to non-prop storage, when nvme nand storage become fully mainstream.

Right now, because of the costs, because of the limited exposure, because of the requirements, it make sense to package a high quality proprietary solution for plug and play.
Besides have you tried self install nvme m.2. It is pretty tricky, with the tiny screw, and standoff.

I think MS made a right choice, now. It helps to offset the msrp of Series X itself. We shall see.
Everything points to MS going for a low price, high performance entry to their next gen platform
I think Microsoft’s approach could make sense at first, with Sony’s paying off later.

It’s looking like it’s going to be difficult, by Mark Cerny’s own words, to find an off-the-shelf storage solution that meets PS5’s needs, for maybe a year or two. The tech just doesn’t exist/isn’t up to that standard yet.

For that reason, I’m really hoping Sony offers their own proprietary drive for sale during this period (and imagine they will).

If this happens though, they’ll be on even footing — everyone will have proprietary drives, and Microsoft’s just happens to be super casual friendly, and honestly kind of fun.

Later on, though, as standards catch up, PS5 fans should be able to upgrade for a lot less than an historically expensive proprietary product from Xbox, shifting the advantage.

If price/room weren’t a factor, I’d prefer both a proprietary slot, and a universal bay.
Sorry mates but this had to be said: Sony does it, it's ARROGANT greedy Sony ripping of the consumer, they set Vita up for doom and dead on arrival _ well, it doesn't matter because (like someone said yesterday in one of the DS5 threads), we all sheep and if Sony wants, they can sell us a turd and we will buy it, like we will buy the weak hass variable clocks turd, and the ds4 rip off with no 3,5 jack!
But in the other hand, Ms do it and it's a right choice! A expensive proprietary solution will help to offset the cost of XSX fantastic decision! It's a high quality plug and play solution, and Microsoft is SUPER CASUAL FRIENDLY _ NVMe needs a manual to install and Sony won't have compatible SSDs for a year or two, so we fucked and will get variable clocks and only 800GB for the games (where did you ear Cerny saying that on GDC? He clearly said that will be updating us with the SSDs later and that they are being tested)!

Now tell me honestly how does this comes along? It's double standards mates, Sony is always back to being arrogant, everything is in the edge of anti-consumer policy... Microsoft is super friendly, and pro-consumer lots of choices, and honest (that's the new shit around here, they are really honest unlike Sony of course, because they revealed more about XSX, i mean, wtf?!) even when they go with old Sony arrogant, anti-consumer practices... everything is pro-consumers.

And before someone comes with the obvious 'it goes both ways', of course it goes _ like ps plus becoming mandatory! But im pretty sure that never heard anyone calling it a 'super friendly whatever' thing... maybe trying to defend it was a necessary evil to improve the shity PSN state. Anyway that's off-topic and we're taking about next gen drives.
 
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Three

Member
With such fierce competition on price, I doubt MS would make it expensive on purpose.
Take the 4TB Seagate Xbox One HDD. Currently it costs 119 USD on Amazon, while the STGX4000400 costs 98 USD. But the Xbox One drive(140 MB/s) is also slightly faster than STGX4000400(120 MB/s). This is not the kind of price difference some posts here are projecting.
On the other hand XSX Memory card contains the same mass produced Series X internal drive unlike the Xbox One HDD. I dont see any significant price difference. It also seems like MS wants the XSX memory card to be adopted by majority of Xbox users.
We've had this conversation before. You can buy an external 4TB usb drive for less than the xbox branded one. The branded one costs more because MS want a cut. It's not faster either.

Also this is not the same as a proprietary format because they can't make that much more expensive because everyone would just buy other drives. People pay the higher price for the 'xbox one drive' because it gives them some stupid assurance that it will work on their xbox one. They don't have the luxury of a choice for the Series X expansion.
 
I miss the MagicGate PS2 memory cards and thr data for each game had an icon/avatar that represents the game.
Hoooly crap you just gave me a blast from the past. I didn't even own a PS2 but I actually had a mega memory card. I used it whenever I got to go to a friends house that had a PS2 I could use it on. Man... So many memories of organizing the storage. Plus if my fuzzy memory serves me right it worked on ps1, psx and ps2
ps1-memory-card-memorycard-speicherkarte-24-mb-360-blocks-performance.jpg


Really cool the sex's storage solution is calling back to the days of memory cards. The nostalgia is actually smacking me in the face right now.
 

longdi

Banned
It was revealed in the GDC presentation: external usb support for ps4 games, of course you can transfer them to ssd also, and take full advantage of the new stuff _ i will absolutely do it for the one or two games I'll be playing at the moment, it's a pretty rapid process and probably will be improved.
For ps5 games there's a Pcie-4 expansion slot, so no proprietary cards. Like Oddvintage said, Sony can still produce and sell it's own costumised NVMe for the expansion, and maybe even sell it for PC market _ because it would be still using standard pcie-4 Nand slots, not proprietary like XSX.




Sorry mates but this had to be said: Sony does it, it's ARROGANT greedy Sony ripping of the consumer, they set Vita up for doom and dead on arrival _ well, it doesn't matter because (like someone said yesterday in one of the DS5 threads), we all sheep and if Sony wants, they can sell us a turd and we will buy it, like we will buy the weak hass variable clocks turd, and the ds4 rip off with no 3,5 jack!
But in the other hand, Ms do it and it's a right choice! A expensive proprietary solution will help to offset the cost of XSX fantastic decision! It's a high quality plug and play solution, and Microsoft is SUPER CASUAL FRIENDLY _ NVMe needs a manual to install and Sony won't have compatible SSDs for a year or two, so we fucked and will get variable clocks and only 800GB for the games (where did you ear Cerny saying that on GDC? He clearly said that will be updating us with the SSDs later and that they are being tested)!

Now tell me honestly how does this comes along? It's double standards mates, Sony is always back to being arrogant, everything is in the edge of anti-consumer policy... Microsoft is super friendly, and pro-consumer lots of choices, and honest (that's the new shit around here, they are really honest unlike Sony of course, because they revealed more about XSX, i mean, wtf?!) even when they go with old Sony arrogant, anti-consumer practices... everything is pro-consumers.

And before someone comes with the obvious 'it goes both ways', of course it goes _ like ps plus becoming mandatory! But im pretty sure that never heard anyone calling it a 'super friendly whatever' thing... maybe trying to defend it was a necessary evil to improve the shity PSN state. Anyway that's off-topic and we're taking about next gen drives.

As shown above, a $20 markup isnt all that bad for 100% performance guarantee and plug and play.
If a 1TB nvme ssd cost $200, i doubt MS will sell their proprietary one for $299. Closer to $229.

People keeps bringing up Vita. But at that time, we have cheaper mSD cards. Sony was selling almost 2x the price of similar size mSD.
Now has anyone shown that the Vita cards are 2x the performance to justify the markup? Thats why Sony was getting hammered.
 

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
This could end up being a severe weakness of the ps5- imagine we are 6 months after launch and there is still no expansion storage on the market for ps5, while ms has a 1tb and a 2tb readily available, nobody will be talking about cost then.
 
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-Arcadia-

Banned
It was revealed in the GDC presentation: external usb support for ps4 games, of course you can transfer them to ssd also, and take full advantage of the new stuff _ i will absolutely do it for the one or two games I'll be playing at the moment, it's a pretty rapid process and probably will be improved.
For ps5 games there's a Pcie-4 expansion slot, so no proprietary cards. Like Oddvintage said, Sony can still produce and sell it's own costumised NVMe for the expansion, and maybe even sell it for PC market _ because it would be still using standard pcie-4 Nand slots, not proprietary like XSX.




Sorry mates but this had to be said: Sony does it, it's ARROGANT greedy Sony ripping of the consumer, they set Vita up for doom and dead on arrival _ well, it doesn't matter because (like someone said yesterday in one of the DS5 threads), we all sheep and if Sony wants, they can sell us a turd and we will buy it, like we will buy the weak hass variable clocks turd, and the ds4 rip off with no 3,5 jack!
But in the other hand, Ms do it and it's a right choice! A expensive proprietary solution will help to offset the cost of XSX fantastic decision! It's a high quality plug and play solution, and Microsoft is SUPER CASUAL FRIENDLY _ NVMe needs a manual to install and Sony won't have compatible SSDs for a year or two, so we fucked and will get variable clocks and only 800GB for the games (where did you ear Cerny saying that on GDC? He clearly said that will be updating us with the SSDs later and that they are being tested)!

Now tell me honestly how does this comes along? It's double standards mates, Sony is always back to being arrogant, everything is in the edge of anti-consumer policy... Microsoft is super friendly, and pro-consumer lots of choices, and honest (that's the new shit around here, they are really honest unlike Sony of course, because they revealed more about XSX, i mean, wtf?!) even when they go with old Sony arrogant, anti-consumer practices... everything is pro-consumers.

And before someone comes with the obvious 'it goes both ways', of course it goes _ like ps plus becoming mandatory! But im pretty sure that never heard anyone calling it a 'super friendly whatever' thing... maybe trying to defend it was a necessary evil to improve the shity PSN state. Anyway that's off-topic and we're taking about next gen drives.

Check my post history. I’m not part of your war.

If you see enemies everywhere, even where there are none, it’s time to reassess your thinking.

Edit: That’s annoying enough that I’m going to ask that you grow up.
 
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Handy Fake

Member
This could end up being a severe weakness of the ps5- imagine we are 6 months after launch and there is still no expansion storage on the market for ps5, while ms has a 1tb and a 2tb readily available, nobody will be talking about cost then.
The PS5 can take any SSD in its expansion slot, but for uncertified ones you'd need to transfer game data to the main drive to play. And with the transfer speeds that oughtn't be much of a chore.
Quite frankly I think many will go for this solution anyway as these fast SSDs aren't going to be cheap.
 

longdi

Banned
I cant see any weakness in MS choice of prop storage.
For current HDD, you can buy faster rpm or even an ssd, while Xbox is stuck with what they have.

But for nvme, PS5 is gonna be restricted to pcie4.0 of ~7gbs max speed. Assuming Sony use 4x lanes for expansion storage.
So even if pcie5 nvme ssd gets cheap in 2 years time, PS5 cant make use of it. 🤷‍♀️
 

Grinchy

Banned
Almost all of us will just be using an external drive to hold game installs that we transfer to the internal SSD of these systems for years after they come out. It's just not going to make sense to go to such great expense just to save ourselves the copying time for like 99% of us.
 

Flintty

Member
It’s an elegant solution, I like it. I’ll probably drop a ton, maybe a ton and a half on one. Any more than that and I’ll wait for a sale.
 

John254

Banned
I really wonder how would Sony take care of their "SSD expansion stuff"

Because not only you will need an NVMe SSD which have required speed (and right now there probably isn't SSD drive like that on market) but they will also need to fit into slot in terms of length and width, because many NVMe drives have heatsinks on them and that can be a big issue.

Microsoft's solution is easier to handle but i wonder if they will charge insane prices for them. Hope not
 

longdi

Banned
I really wonder how would Sony take care of their "SSD expansion stuff"

Because not only you will need an NVMe SSD which have required speed (and right now there probably isn't SSD drive like that on market) but they will also need to fit into slot in terms of length and width, because many NVMe drives have heatsinks on them and that can be a big issue.

Microsoft's solution is easier to handle but i wonder if they will charge insane prices for them. Hope not

The only way Sony should do, is to provide heatsinking in their slot, force off the shelf buyers to remove the stock one.
The nvme pcb is standard sizing.
It makes no sense to allow PS5 to accept a range of off the shell drives with their fancy rgb heatsink.

Maybe thats why they cant show PS5 design yet. They need to decide how big of a hole to leave in there.
Further reinforcing MS smarter prop solution.. 🤷‍♀️
 

John254

Banned
The only way Sony should do, is to provide heatsinking in their slot, force off the shelf buyers to remove the stock one.
The nvme pcb is standard sizing.
It makes no sense to allow PS5 to accept a range of off the shell drives with their fancy rgb heatsink.

Maybe thats why they cant show PS5 design yet. They need to decide how big of a hole to leave in there.
Further reinforcing MS smarter prop solution.. 🤷‍♀️
Isn't there different lenghts of NVMe SSD's?
619rRP0sWNL._SX679_.jpg
 

sircaw

Banned
I really like the way it looks but i can only imagine mum + dads look when they say "You want us to pay how Much" for that little thing.
 

ZywyPL

Banned
Bwahahaha.

I get it, we're in prime console warzz season and whatnot but rofl...

option a) Propietary Microsoft Drive: you are the mercy of microsoft who are free to price the storage as they will enabling them to implement storage tiered sales strategy as apple does. History shows propietary interfaces on standard components have always resulted in price gouging.

option b) Standard nvme interface on the PS5: Sony releases a list of compatible SSDS. You go to the market and find the cheapest drive from their list. Because these drives use an industry standard interface, you'll find vendors competing for price in the market. History shows that the absence of propietary storage ensures the largest availability and the lowest price since the user benefits from market forces.

And somehow, in a fit of fanboy logic you conclude that option a is the best one for the consumer.

Sorry but I am unable to see any logic/counterarguments in your post - you basically agree with me that MS, quote: "are free to price the storage as they will", and for some unknown reason you automatically paint them as the bad guys "just because".

And then you go saying that I can just buy the cheapenst standard NVMe drive for PS5, completely forgetting to take into consideration that the cheapest 5TB/s+ ones can still be hell of a expensive - 1TB NVMe drives that aren't even as fast as the PS5 drive already cost ~200$, with big heatsinks that don't guarantee you will be even able to put them into the console to begin with.

PC parts are common to have HUGE profit margins, even up to 60-70%, Samsung, Crusial, Kingston etc. won't drop those just because PS5 can also use their drives now, if anything, they will want to capitalize on that even further, more potential customer base = more potential profit. Because it's all just a business, and those companies aren't interested in anything else than making huge money, like the childish console wars you are apparently into...
 

ANIMAL1975

Member
As shown above, a $20 markup isnt all that bad for 100% performance guarantee and plug and play.
If a 1TB nvme ssd cost $200, i doubt MS will sell their proprietary one for $299. Closer to $229.

People keeps bringing up Vita. But at that time, we have cheaper mSD cards. Sony was selling almost 2x the price of similar size mSD.
Now has anyone shown that the Vita cards are 2x the performance to justify the markup? Thats why Sony was getting hammered.
Those are products for some time on the market, old tech with much more competition, and it's a standard HD that you can plug anywhere you want, Seagate was surely pricing it as a global market product, not a Xbox one only HD.
You can't compare it to a fully customized memory card... and that will only be selling for XSX! So yes you can compare it to the Vita cards it was the exact same situation, without your guessings on performance advantages lol _ you do realize that, to take fully advantage of the hardware and the new SSD tech, you have to install and run your games on the main system memory _ the soldered one that is not swappable. That's why this gen we have expansion memories. Mark Sony already clarified it on GDC, or is it going to be different for XSX?
 

dolabla

Member
That's pretty awesome to see the memory card return. Will be cool if Sony does this too. I wonder if you can carry it around with you like say a friends house and play digital titles on his/her Series X.
 

Neo Blaster

Member
I really wonder how would Sony take care of their "SSD expansion stuff"

Because not only you will need an NVMe SSD which have required speed (and right now there probably isn't SSD drive like that on market) but they will also need to fit into slot in terms of length and width, because many NVMe drives have heatsinks on them and that can be a big issue.

Microsoft's solution is easier to handle but i wonder if they will charge insane prices for them. Hope not
Sony definitely will have a list of PS5 certified drives constantly updated after the system launches. If their console sells well, expect quite a bunch of manufacturers to go after a piece of this new market, offering a good variety of size and price options. MS' solution is stuck to a single size and manufacturer, so albeit easier to use there will be only one price, and most probably expensive.
 
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M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Isn't there different lenghts of NVMe SSD's?
619rRP0sWNL._SX679_.jpg
Yeah but that's SATA based m.2 SSD. Not a NVMe. I don't think I ever saw a smaller NVMe as a standard. MS uses some smaller drive for their Surface, but I am not sure if that is not proprietary.
 

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
Those are products for some time on the market, old tech with much more competition, and it's a standard HD that you can plug anywhere you want, Seagate was surely pricing it as a global market product, not a Xbox one only HD.
You can't compare it to a fully customized memory card... and that will only be selling for XSX! So yes you can compare it to the Vita cards it was the exact same situation, without your guessings on performance advantages lol _ you do realize that, to take fully advantage of the hardware and the new SSD tech, you have to install and run your games on the main system memory _ the soldered one that is not swappable. That's why this gen we have expansion memories. Mark Sony already clarified it on GDC, or is it going to be different for XSX?
Read the OP once again
The Xbox Series X Storage Expansion card had a brief moment in the spotlight during the latest Inside Xbox stream. Microsoft showed off the card in real life and offered more insight into how it will let you store more games without sacrificing performance.

This memory card stores a terabyte worth of game data, not just a few megabytes of save files. As Xbox Series X director of program management Jason Ronald explained, it also matches up with the speed offered by Xbox Series X's internal storage "exactly".

"But at the same time, we know plenty of people have existing USB hard drives. And we want to make it as easy as possible, so you can easily just take the existing external hard drive that you have, unplug it from your current console, plug it into your Xbox Series X, and all your games are instantly available to you. And you can continue to run all those games directly off that external drive. So once again, we're really focused on giving as many options as possible because we know storage is critically important for gamers who have plenty of games they love playing."

"Built in partnership with Seagate, this 1TB custom storage solution expands storage capacity of Xbox Series X with the full speed and performance of the Xbox Velocity Architecture. Previous-generation Xbox titles can still be played directly from external USB 3.2 hard drives. However, to receive all the benefits of the Xbox Velocity Architecture and optimal performance, Xbox Series X optimized games should be played from the internal SSD or Xbox Series X Storage Expansion Card."

Price was not revealed.

Source: https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/the-x...card-but-it-is-a-highly-refined-external-ssd/
External drives are slower than internal drives because they use USB. XSX memory card directly plugs to a PCIe slot like intetnal drives. It is literally the same drive as the one inside.
 

nikolino840

Member
Hoooly crap you just gave me a blast from the past. I didn't even own a PS2 but I actually had a mega memory card. I used it whenever I got to go to a friends house that had a PS2 I could use it on. Man... So many memories of organizing the storage. Plus if my fuzzy memory serves me right it worked on ps1, psx and ps2
ps1-memory-card-memorycard-speicherkarte-24-mb-360-blocks-performance.jpg


Really cool the sex's storage solution is calling back to the days of memory cards. The nostalgia is actually smacking me in the face right now.
In that time there was the on the shelf alternative? I mean... portable hard disk for PC for example
 

John254

Banned
Sony definitely will have a list of PS5 certified drives constantly updated after the system launches. If their console sells well, expect quite a bunch of manufacturers to go after a piece of this new market, offering a good variety of size and price options. MS' solution is stuck to a single size and manufacturer, so albeit easier to use there will be only one price, and most probably expensive.
As I said earlier, i fully expect Microsoft to have a price edge at first, just because their speed req. aren't as high. But as time will pass and prices of PS5 supported drives will go down, i expect market to lower them even further.

So Microsoft will have edge at first, but then it would be better on PS5.
 

ZywyPL

Banned
you do realize that, to take fully advantage of the hardware and the new SSD tech, you have to install and run your games on the main system memory _ the soldered one that is not swappable. That's why this gen we have expansion memories. Mark Sony already clarified it on GDC, or is it going to be different for XSX?

That's not true at all, quite opposite, MS is crystal clear there is no difference between the build-in drive and the expansion drives, they are basically the same thing except with additional, enclosure, the reason they are going with their proprietary solution is exactly to avoid the the games being able to run only from the internal drive. Sony's solution is completely different, it is yet to be determined what format, speed and size the 3rd party drives will have to have to be able to fit within PS5.
 
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Deleted member 775630

Unconfirmed Member
From a consumer perspective Microsoft's solution is easier and more elegant, but might be more expensive. Sony's is cheaper depending on what kind of SSD you'll buy, but the messaging is a lot harder on which solutions you can and can't buy, which might result in buying the wrong item
 

Handy Fake

Member
Almost all of us will just be using an external drive to hold game installs that we transfer to the internal SSD of these systems for years after they come out. It's just not going to make sense to go to such great expense just to save ourselves the copying time for like 99% of us.
Exactly.
Both systems are going to accept these external drives (although presumably MS doesn't accept slower/cheaper SSDs because of the proprietary slot? Whereas PS5 will) and with the internal SSD on both systems copying over installs isn't going to take long at all.
 
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ANIMAL1975

Member
Check my post history. I’m not part of your war.

If you see enemies everywhere, even where there are none, it’s time to reassess your thinking.

Edit: That’s annoying enough that I’m going to ask that you grow up.
Lol now i have to check everyones post history before starting a conversation? You're overreacting and or oversensitive, see how longdi replied to me... Not everything has to be wars _ you made a post that i quoted to the matter, was not accusing you of being the cause of the situation. If that was what you thought of it, or how it looked like... why not first reply asking for clarification, not everyone is uncivilized and or warring. But well never mind, all part of the growing up process, always learning and all that... (talking about my growing up not yours if it wasn't clear lol)
 

DaGwaphics

Member
The big issue with NVMe drives is flash shortages, price fixing ahoy yes, not the controller logic around it so open market SSD vs Proprietary SSD makes little difference.

Looking at the market, drives with dramless 4 channel controllers tend to be noticeably less expensive than 8 channel setups.

People may be underestimating the amount of bandwidth it takes for standard NVMe to masquerade as a 6 priority device (you may potentially need 3 requests to match a single request from the PS5 drive).
 
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Quasicat

Member
Based on how much I paid for a 512gb micro sd card for my Switch ($90), I could see myself picking up one of these for $180. It’s not like I’m going to need it right away though.
 

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
From a consumer perspective Microsoft's solution is easier and more elegant, but might be more expensive. Sony's is cheaper depending on what kind of SSD you'll buy, but the messaging is a lot harder on which solutions you can and can't buy, which might result in buying the wrong item
Sony is dictating what kind of SSD's you should buy and they are not cheap.
Microsoft has shown this gen for their propitiatory storage to be only 20 USD more expensive than equivalent solutions(sometimes slightly worse) from the same company.
 

ANIMAL1975

Member
Read the OP once again

External drives are slower than internal drives because they use USB. XSX memory card directly plugs to a PCIe slot like intetnal drives. It is literally the same drive as the one inside.
That's not true at all, quite opposite, MS is crystal clear there is no difference between the build-in drive and the expansion drives, they are basically the same thing except with additional, enclosure, the reason they are going with their proprietary solution is exactly to avoid the the games being able to run only from the internal drive. Sony's solution is completely different, it is yet to be determined what format, speed and size the 3rd party drives will have to have to be able to fit within PS5.
You are both correct, i completely missed it, so very different from Sonys approach. Not going to lye would've preferred it to be that way too, much more convenient! It's the price of the difference between the two systems. Thanks
 
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