Cheaper Western Digital storage card for Xbox Series X and S appears online

Western Digital seems to be working on storage modules for the Xbox Series X and S. A US store put such modules online early, with prices of $180 for a 1TB model. To date, only Seagate made storage cards for the Xbox Series consoles.

The Western Digital C50 expansion cards recently appeared at US retailer Best Buy, The Verge was the first to notice. A 1TB variant was listed on that company’s web store for $180. That’s less than the 1TB card Seagate ships; that card had a suggested retail price of $ 220 and is listed in the Pricewatch for € 162.59. Best Buy has since taken the products offline. It is not known when Western Digital will officially announce the cards.

These types of storage cards are external SSDs with a proprietary connection that can be used to expand the storage of an Xbox Series X or S. The cards are just as fast as the internal SSD of the consoles. Currently, only Seagate makes such storage cards, in 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB variants. Western Digital seems to be coming soon with at least a 1TB Xbox card, at a lower suggested retail price than Seagate’s counterpart. It is not known whether Western Digital is also working on storage cards with other storage amounts.

The price of 180 dollars, converted and with VAT, amounts to 201 euros. That is still more expensive than the price of a similar PCIe 4.0 SSD. Sony’s PS5 uses such M.2 SSDs, although they are officially required to offer minimum sequential read speeds of 5500MB/s. SSDs that meet that requirement are currently listed in the Pricewatch for less than a hundred euros.