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USGamer: Xbox Series X Will Require Proprietary Cards to Expand Hard Drive Space (USB HDDs still supported for backups and playing BC games)
- Thread starter Yinyangfooey
- Start date
I think it's probably reasonable for them to stick with something like this as long as they don't price gouge. If it's just a 20% surcharge vs street prices on comparable m.2 NVMe parts, then I'm good with it as a way to ensure reasonable parts selection. Going price is about $1.20/gb for m.2 NVMe SSDs:
Choose Storage
pcpartpicker.com
If they keep it no more than say $1.50 a gig, then I'm pretty ok with it.
I am however NOT OK with $2 a gig.
The price per gig also needs to scale with the market.
It will probably be m.2 internally. They'll probably drop a bunch fo pins though. No need for the SATA pins on this guy.
You are ok with $1500 for a 1TB SSD?!
Not exactly. It only applies to Xbox Series X games, and only for live usage. SX games can be backed up to USB3 external drives, and still be used for BC games, as indicated by the thread title.
You can't decide that for yourself, "load times" aren't a static concept, your game can be using offline storage anytime for anything. Take for example the original Crash Bandicoot which used optical storage in 64KB chunks, streaming it to the RAM in the background as gameplay went on, due to the level not being able to fit entirely in RAM at one time. If you change the offline storage, you'd change how quickly the game could expect content on the fly, Crash Bandicoot could no longer be guaranteed to seamlessly continue level progression if the storage suddenly stalled out on it.
Take that and extrapolate it to an online game, say an MMO or some sort of co-op game, suddenly the individual user who has slower or more latent storage can no longer be guaranteed to be kept in sync with the other players. This is extremely bad if your game engine can't scale to the concept, or your console version was optimised around it (say using less RAM in favour of being able to dynamically shift out level chunks).
And remember it's not just the bandwidth of storage that plays a critical role in this, but the latency of it as well. You can have a really high bandwidth storage chip and it could mean absolutely nothing if it takes 100ms to poll anything from it.
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I think it's probably reasonable for them to stick with something like this as long as they don't price gouge. If it's just a 20% surcharge vs street prices on comparable m.2 NVMe parts, then I'm good with it as a way to ensure reasonable parts selection. Going price is about $1.20/gb for m.2 NVMe SSDs:
Choose Storage
If they keep it no more than say $1.50 a gig, then I'm pretty ok with it.
I am however NOT OK with $2 a gig.
The price per gig also needs to scale with the market.
It will probably be m.2 internally. They'll probably drop a bunch fo pins though. No need for the SATA pins on this guy.
your math is a little off...you sure you didn't mean like $0.15 a gb or something?
$150 for an 1tb nvme m.2 drive is about the average for a decent one. Definitely not $1.5k to $2k per tb
Just get a big cheap HDD and back up your games onto it. Then you can switch them back and forth. PC gamers been doing this for years and years.
It won't be m.2 it's confirmed custom NVMe probably 25c per gigabyteI think it's probably reasonable for them to stick with something like this as long as they don't price gouge. If it's just a 20% surcharge vs street prices on comparable m.2 NVMe parts, then I'm good with it as a way to ensure reasonable parts selection. Going price is about $1.20/gb for m.2 NVMe SSDs:
Choose Storage
If they keep it no more than say $1.50 a gig, then I'm pretty ok with it.
I am however NOT OK with $2 a gig.
The price per gig also needs to scale with the market.
It will probably be m.2 internally. They'll probably drop a bunch fo pins though. No need for the SATA pins on this guy.
I move games I am not playing to my 6 TB mechanical internal hard drive. So yeah, it is easy to do. But copying them back to the SSD isn't instant but less time than redownloading and no data cap issues (I have a data cap in non covid times...)
I can't imagine anyone is making megabucks on them, but by the time you've got that nice retail packaging and retailer margin, it's ain't gonna be the same price as a part sold by an online only retailer.
But those prices show exactly why there is only 1TB in there by default.
a difference is you can play any of your games on pc through an external drive. With the Series X it will only be used for storage purposes in the case of exclusive Series X games. You will need to transfer those gb's back and forth by removing and installing them back on the system to actually play it. It removes the d/l part of the equation. But there is still the install time (which will be effected by what the external storage is)
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I mean, if you can seriously read all the information released on this and still come to that conclusion then critical thinking truly is dead
Will you also turn down PS5 if... when Sony announces similar thing for its external storage?
i finally got used to having a 4tb hdd....and not having to constantly delete and reinstall things.
i cannot. i will not ....go back to having only 9-12 games fit on my console at once.
i cannot. i will not ....go back to having only 9-12 games fit on my console at once.
I understand all that but they can only count on the main drive being what people will have. Therefore any duty performed by the secondary storage does not necessarily need to be a first class citizen. They could have that storage used for offloading and use the primary storage for their speedy disk loading (I just went and reread some stuff, and in fact you can apparently do this. I would want it to be automatic, so hopefully people don't have to clean the fridge and restock it)
I am also very cynical of any grand speed increases over any high quality SSD anyway and would need to see the real stats compared to what's readily available. If it's twice as fast as an SSD I would claim it's unnecessary.
I don't see the Vita comparisons unless MS requires you buy one of these just to use the system.
Im pretty good about managing my storage. I just uninstall games I'm not playing, but I don't have a data cap. I don't like having external HDDs tethered to my console/pc.
Im pretty good about managing my storage. I just uninstall games I'm not playing, but I don't have a data cap. I don't like having external HDDs tethered to my console/pc.
You literally are going to be forced to if you want next gen games.
Some people are going to be exposed once Sony announces there console. Unless they aren't console buyers
If the actual SSD is proprietary because it will be optimised, then so will the expanded storage. You can't just replace it with an off the shelf SSD because it would not run as intended. I expect PS5 to have the same implementation. This is also a sign that we're going to get 1TB SSD at best, and these cards will not be cheap.
Yep. I was off by a decimal point. I meant running is $0.12 a gig, and I would accept $0.15 a gig.
Personal hope is that it would be a PCIeX4 m.2 NVMe SSD in a fancy shell to make it more like a cartridge, but MS might be up to their old fuckery and require a specific boot sector or bridge chip or some shit.
Even if that's said, I'm not against plugging in an external hard drive (the garage freezer?) and keeping my library there if there's some sort of nice storage management. Even better would be if I could just have it talk to my NAS and keep less used games there, but no way would they be that kind to a data hoarder like myself.
Yep, there's no other way if you want to experience next gen with SSD.
Electrically the same as m.2. The USB pins on my motherboard are still USB even if they're pins instead of the normal port.
Curious how much the expansion will cost. Mostly because ideally I'd want them to make a bigger one down the line.
Sony is going to be doing either the same thing or not allow user upgradable storage.
Hmmmm, then that has to be a custom bus for that because I don't see anything that would remotely suggest that we have anything that would push out an entire AAA game, it's shaders, etc. down the line to the APU even with PCIe 4.0/USB4 (and given that we confirmed the APU is using Zen2, yeah...). It catches me as still too large for that, but then again AMD Infinity Fabric/Infrastructure might be something that is closer to the I/O of this machine and it's rather fast in standard chips.
True. I don't play any of the games I have stored on my external drive FROM the external drive, because it's a slow drive. It holds 4TB though so I just download my games once and I can transfer back and forth whenever without having to download again.
I have no problem with this. People can still use large HDD for storage of all their games and wait a couple of minutes if they want to switch games.
They needed to ensure a baseline speed for devs to target somehow. Its either this or a system to reliably test any SSD that consumers will hook up to these things and flat out reject them if they're not fast enough.
This reduces the number of variables devs need to account for by a lot.
They needed to ensure a baseline speed for devs to target somehow. Its either this or a system to reliably test any SSD that consumers will hook up to these things and flat out reject them if they're not fast enough.
This reduces the number of variables devs need to account for by a lot.
Sony sounds like they're using even faster and potentially more specialized storage solution, so I would not be surprised if the internal memory isn't upgradable at all.
Plug your 4TB into your XSX on day 1 and boom! 4TB of games instantly installed.
Run them from there, or if you feel the need for speed, copy some over to the internal SSD.
Running out of space on the internal? Copy 'em back to the external. They're still installed.
The only exception is XSX proprietary games. You can do everything I already mentioned except run them from the external.
We've been living in the digital age for a while now.? Memory management should be a fact of life by now. Copying back and forth between internal and external is a smaller price to pay than the $199-$299 or whatever this completely optional expansion SSD is going to cost.
The fact that storage is expendable is fantastic. Sure the cost is worrying but at least there is an option. The alternatives were either no expandable storage or some type of way to plug in m2 drives which could give varying performance and results. Let's see what the price is
We should be careful about what companies say to judge performance. When talking about both companies, are they talking about guaranteed performance or peak performance when discussing things? Sounds to me Microsoft is talking about one while Sony is talking about the other so it would be hard to say how they compare at the moment and it's possible both have strengths in different scenarios.
That's my thought as well. Particularly if they make the interface easy to use.
Yeah, obviously MS did it for you, the consumer.
Why people defend multi-billion dollar mega-corporations even when they make obviously anti-consumer decisions is beyond me. And now I'm apparently not allowed to criticize them either. -_-
Just do a certification program, and allow manufacutrers to print the Xbox logo on the box of qualifying drives. Simple.
That sounds like what they are already going to do (down the road):
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Here’s how Xbox Series X removable storage will work
You might need a new expansion card for Xbox Series X optimized games.
www.theverge.com
Fair enough.
Ideally Sony will have something similar with an external plug-and-play solution.
I would think so for regular PS4 titles but if you want no load times and so on you'd need to use the latest tech it uses.
Look at the crucial then. PCIe and only up to 2GB/s, so lower than what MS can do with theirs. And they are all 2280, enough to confuse people to get the wrong one.
the reality is that no console manufacturer is going to have people put in NVMe drives by themselves, it's foolish to think otherwise.
No, they have to use a proprietary interface. I'm talking about certifying off the shelf SSDs, which would almost certainly result in better prices for the consumer.That sounds like what they are already going to do (down the road):
Here’s how Xbox Series X removable storage will work
You might need a new expansion card for Xbox Series X optimized games.
Is that 0.4 gigabit difference really going to matter so much though? Really? Linus Tech Tips just did a blind comparsion, where they ended up with a SATA SSD as the winner based solely on user experience...
Exactly. Unless Sony does not offer expandable storage, which would be a much worse alternative to what MS is doing.
The only way I can see Sony doing better is announcing more than one partner to its proprietary expandable storage solution.
Seagate HDDs have been very reliable lately, especially if you run their ironwolf drives (haven't had any issues with mine in my NAS) and I have old external hard drives from Seagate from the 360 days that still work. As for SSDs, Seagate is perfectly fine.
I have no faith in that.
Does anyone have the dimensions on the SSD that this thing uses?
Oh lawd. The edge.
This is a perfectly reasonable solution by MS. I am sorry you don't like it.
