With less than a week to go now, the hype and anticipation is at an all-time high for the upcoming Xbox Series X/Series S. Apparently, one Reddit user who was able to shift through the mess that was the pre-order day has received their Xbox Series S week early, leaking a very important tidbit that everyone getting the system should know. The internal Solid State Drive (SSD) that is housed with roughly 512 GB will only have 364 GB of usable space, as the other 148 GB is already being used by the operating system. This means that the digital-only console’s memory is going to be filled up very quickly.
Now there is a way to avoid this situation, one that is a fairly expensive endeavor. Microsoft will be offering a Seagate-produced proprietary external 1TB SSD memory card for both the Series X and Series S, which will cost $219.99. You can also get portable SSD and make use of the USB drive, albeit without any game optimizations, and if you only want to balance the installations for the internal SSD. The good part about this memory situation is that the games on the Series S won’t include the Xbox One Game Enhancements for the backward compatible titles, as well as not requiring any 4K texture packs. This ensures that the games being downloaded on the Series S won’t have as much memory consumption as the Series X.
Still, there are going to be games that require huge chunks of the SSD, such as the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. That game alone will require roughly 136 GB for the Xbox Series X and Series S, which nearly half of the 364 GB that is supposedly available. To compact this issue, games will undoubtedly grow in size over time, as each title becomes much more detailed and complex. The Series X and the PlayStation 5 will run into this issue as well, as the internal memory for each system is roughly 1TB and 800 GB respectively, with the operating systems taking up some room right off the bat as well. Hopefully, both companies come up with a solution sooner rather than later.
The Xbox Series X/Series S officially launches next week on November 10.