Since the Xbox Series X will be equipped with extremely powerful SSDs, the corresponding third-party storage must have equally impressive specifications. Today, popular hard drive maker Seagate announced a storage expansion card for the Xbox Series X, becoming the first third-party manufacturer to explicitly state its next-generation storage options.

We don't know much more about Seagate's upcoming SSD yet, but we do know that it will be small, fast, and designed specifically for the Xbox Series X.

This information comes from Seagate's website, which has a page dedicated to the Seagate Storage Expansion Card for the Xbox Series X. No price is listed yet, but there is a picture of the device, information about its storage capacity (1 TB), and a release date (Holiday 2020).

First of all, the Expansion Card is not just a standard boxy external hard drive. Instead, it's a sleek little card that looks like a flattened thin thumb drive; it plugs into a dedicated port on the back of the Xbox Series X and, at least according to Seagate, should work at the same speed as the Xbox Series X's internal hard drive.

However, there is still not much technical information on the SSD. The expansion card will offer 1TB of storage space (perhaps a bit less once formatted and filled with system files), a custom PCIe Gen4x2 NVMe flash memory protocol, and a three-year warranty. Seagate worked with Microsoft to develop the expansion card, so compatibility is not an issue. Performance should be similar to Microsoft's own SSDs. [Seagate Senior Vice President Jeff Fochtman said. "The new standards in performance will make gaming more dynamic, visually stunning, and immersive than ever before. Seagate's Xbox Series X storage expansion card technology replicates the console's internal SSD experience, providing additional gaming storage at peak speed. Seagate is proud to join forces with Xbox and can't wait to help gamers immerse themselves in the hi-fi experience.

The only possible drawback is the 1TB file size. It is not uncommon for modern console games to exceed 50 or 100 GB. There is no reason to think that next generation games will be any smaller; the Xbox Series X's internal SSD provides 1TB of storage capacity, which may be enough for 10 games; a 2TB or 4TB expansion card could theoretically support dozens, if not 10 games It could theoretically support dozens, if not ten, games. But until we hear specific file sizes from Microsoft, this is mostly speculation. Perhaps the improved compression ratio will make the 1 TB internal and 1 TB external capacities seem exactly as generous as they are.