The onboard storage of Xbox Series X and S consoles has been a topic of much debate and contention among gamers. For a lot of Xbox’s core users, the internal storage just didn’t cut it, and Microsoft’s solutions to this issue posed its own unique problems. For starters, each console does come with the ability to connect a USB drive or portable HDD, but those storage solutions were only compatible with older Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Xbox original games. For newer games, Microsoft built a proprietary expansion slot into the console, with support for third-party SSD cards. Up until now, Seagate was the only company building these cards – an exclusivity that saw them hiking up the price of the storage cards (because you couldn’t buy them anywhere else). To break this monopoly, WD_Black (the gaming arm of Western Digital) just announced the C50 Expansion Card for the Xbox. Designed in 500GB and 1TB formats, the C50 Expansion Card starts at $79.99, undercutting Seagate’s original $139 price range.
Designer: Western Digital
The C50 offers a ridiculously easy way to practically double your Xbox’s storage in seconds. Quite like how plugging a thumb-drive into a computer instantly gives you additional external storage, plugging the C50 into the Xbox increases its storage without really any installation or extra software. You can easily save games and files onto it, freeing up your Xbox’s local storage. Moreover, the plug-and-play nature of the C50 means you can carry your game files with you and play them anywhere, like a friend’s console.
The size of modern game files, particularly titles like Call of Duty and the Halo Collection, has continued to increase with time. With game files surpassing 120 gigabytes, the onboard storage alone is far from being a viable long-term solution. This issue is particularly challenging for Series S owners, as the digital-only console lacks physical discs and requires frequent deletion and re-downloading of games. Cards like the C50 solve that problem, with a sleek design that’s compact, easy to carry, and fits perfectly into the console without sticking out like a sore thumb.
