SanDisk has become the third company to release Expansion Cards for Xbox Series X/S consoles.
Expansion Cards originally launched alongside the consoles in November 2020 and were only available from Seagate, at a price of $220 for 1TB of extra storage.
At the time, Xbox explained that the Expansion Cards were so expensive because they offered cutting edge read and write speeds similar to the ‘Velocity Architecture’ in the console’s internal SSD.
It was believed that over time more companies would offer their own Expansion Cards and this competition – as well as what was believed to be the general decrease in storage costs over time – would eventually drive prices down.
Seagate later introduced new capacity options then announced a price drop in 2023, with 512GB for $89.99, 1TB for $149.99 and 2TB for $279.99. Western Digital then became the second company to sell Expansion Cards, adding a range in 2023 which offered 500 GB for $79.99 and 1TB for $149.99.
Now, six years after the console’s release, a third option from SanDisk has arrived, and given the current increase in storage costs anyone expecting a drop in price is likely to be disappointed.
The Optimus GX C50 Storage Expansion Card range for Xbox Series X/S costs $109.99 / £88.99 for 512GB, $199.99 / £177.99 for 1TB and $339.99 / £249.99 for 2TB.
This could also be a temporary introductory price, because the official SanDisk website implies that the normal price for each is actually $137.99 for 512GB, $249.99 for 1TB (more than it cost on the Xbox Series X/S launch) and $424.99 for 2TB,
The introduction of SanDisk’s cards arguably do nothing to reduce the cost of adding extra storage to a range of consoles that’s also seen numerous price increases over the past few years, due to an increase in memory and storage costs.
PS5 consoles don’t have proprietary expansion cards and instead allow people to expand their console’s storage by opening it up and adding a compatible SSD drive. Given the rise in the cost of storage across the board, however, it’s becoming an increasingly pricey prospect too.
