Thursday, September 24, 2020

Microsoft's new XBox uses proprietary expansion cards that cost $219.99

Kotaku:
As I pointed out back during our comparison post when the S was first revealed, 512GB is nothing in today’s digital gaming environment where AAA games can average anywhere between 50 and 100 GB. Microsoft confirmed earlier this year that while existing external hard drives will be compatible with the Series X and S for Xbox One, 360, and Xbox games, next-gen games will only work off of proprietary SSD drives.

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To put cards’ price in perspective, $220 is more than a Switch Lite
Microsoft explains:
The foundation of the Xbox Velocity Architecture is our custom, internal SSD delivering 2.4 GB/s of raw I/O throughput, more than 40x the throughput of Xbox One. The Seagate Expandable Storage Card was designed using the Xbox Velocity Architecture API to deliver the exact same consistent, sustained performance of our internal SSD ensuring you have the exact same gameplay experience regardless of where the game resides.
A Switch Lite is $199 at Amazon.