The 2TB WD_Black C50 expansion card for Xbox Series X/S hits record low $190
That’s the lowest price we’ve seen yet on any 2TB card.
NGL, I've been waiting for this. Yeah, yeah, proprietary expansion, too expensive, but on the Xbox, you won't (currently) do better.
The fact that consoles still get away with this inflated proprietary crap is shocking
Well, not ALL consoles. The PS5 uses a standard SSD slot. Pretty easy to get at too. Easier than the Steam Deck.
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps5-install-m2-ssd/
Probably harder making sure you get the "right" ssd than actually installing it.
"Easier than the Steam Deck" Probably because the PS5 is not a Portable device
What are we going to do if consumers still buy that stuff?
Well, they will. Two things drive the trend, in my view:
Between those two factors, it's a hard sell for the average consumer to not support this kind of corpo garbage. A nihilistic view, maybe, but I think it's an accurate one.
In a similar vein, it's pretty easy to show someone that consoles have these needlessly expensive proprietary links, plus games which are very expensive for the same reason. But it is very hard to convince someone that the cool thing they saw on TV isn't, in fact, "cool" because of the aforementioned reasons. And ultimately, people like having cool things, even if that coolness is subjective.
Historically, it's been a push-pull between groups, but everyone has had a different future. Now that things are being consolidated wholesale -- e.g. physical media going out the window because so many are happy to stream and never own anything -- it is more necessary than ever to call out #1 and #2, since the market itself is changing for the worse.
Why not use non proprietary
Sure, you can swap out the internal SSD, it's a 40 step process to just get to it:
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Xbox+Series+X+SSD+Replacement/141752
It is intentionally difficult, of course.
The real solution is not to buy the console.
Idk id do 40 steps to save that kind of money
Weird, I have a regular old 2TB (or maybe it was 1?) western digital plugged into the USB on the back of my series x and it works fine, not sure I understand the need to spend a bunch on something like this. Edit: and before responding about speed... I haven't noticed much, if any, difference in game performance from installing on the drive or external outside of the initial game loading (startup) time, so not sure if that's the only benefit to using the expansion slot.
USB drives are good for storage only, you can't actually play the games from there. You have to move them to the SSD to play them.
Hmm I'll have to check this later as I don't remember ever running into that problem since my Xbox internal has been full for a while. But I also wonder if that applies to physical copies or not since all my series x games are physical. Unless Xbox does this automatically in the background without user intervention, then I may have not noticed
