Fans anticipating the upcoming Xbox Series X were taken by surprise this week when after months of leaks and speculation, Microsoft was forced to announce the Xbox Series S a week in advance. The budget next-generation console, launching at $299 on November 10th, is planned to take advantage of all of the technical features of the Xbox Series X, but with the intended resolutions of 1440p rather than 4K.
One major difference between both consoles is that the Xbox Series X will allow the use of both digital and physical games, while the Series S is planned to be digital only. With this information comes another big caveat. While the Xbox Series X will include an SSD with 1 terabyte of internal storage, the SSD included with the Series S will only include 512 GB. Thankfully, Microsoft has clarified that not only will the Xbox Series S be compatible with the upcoming 1TB Seagate Storage Expansion Card, but the expansion card will also be hot-swappable.
Xbox's Director of Project Management Jason Ronald confirmed this information when questioned by a fan on Twitter yesterday, confirming that fans will not have to restart either the Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S consoles when connecting or disconnecting a storage expansion card. This is refreshing to hear given the disappointment many fans were faced with upon hearing that the Xbox Series S will feature half of the storage space of the Series X despite being the digital-only alternative.
Unfortunately, despite releasing both the prices and release date for both consoles, Microsoft nor Seagate have confirmed the price for the SSD expansion cards, with many fans speculating that they could possibly retail for higher than $200. While many fans were initially disappointed to hear that the next-generation Xbox consoles will not allow the use of external hard-drives, creating proprietary expansion cards was the only solution for Microsoft to take in regards to storage expansion given the Xbox Series X and Series S' custom SSDs. That said, even without the expansion cards, the Xbox Series X's SSD is still capable of more storage than the PlayStation 5's 825GB SSD.
Frustratingly, another caveat Xbox Series S owners will soon have to face is that the console has been confirmed to not take advantage of Xbox One X enhancements when running backward compatible games from the Xbox One, Xbox 360 and original Xbox libraries. This means that titles such as Final Fantasy 13, which ran at 540p on the Xbox 360, will see no resolution enhancements on Xbox Series S when running through backwards compatibility.
Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S will release on November 10th 2020. Pre-orders are intended to go live on September 22nd.