Good news! Microsoft has listened, and will give the Xbox Series S a much-needed upgrade. No, not that one… or that one, thank goodness.
No, this September, Microsoft will release a new version of the Xbox Series S with twice the current internal storage space, taking it to 1TB.
This is objectively a good thing, given the 512GB space in the existing model has a tendency to fill up fast, with the all-you-can-eat Game Pass service constantly offering up tasty (and not-so-tasty, but still free) morsels.
Technically, you could increase the capacity of your Xbox Series S yourself, but with the kind of caveats visible from space.
You can attach any old hard drive to the console’s USB ports, for example, but it won’t work for current-generation games which need something faster, making it a repository for Xbox One, Xbox 360 and OG Xbox games.
Alternatively, you can buy one of Microsoft’s official Seagate expansion cards to increase capacity by up to 2TB. And this can indeed be used for Xbox Series titles.
…but with the 512GB one seemingly out of stock at all the usual places, and 1TB costing NZ$399 — not far off the NZ$549 price of the Series S itself — it remains an absolutely rip off.
Indeed, if you wanted more space, it just made sense for people to buy a Series X (NZ$799) instead. Especially given it also packs a (slightly) faster processor, a (significantly) more powerful GPU and 4GB more RAM within its chunky frame.
The 1TB Xbox Series S also gets a new all-black colour scheme, to help it blend in with your surroundings more. It’s not clear if it’s replacing the white 512GB version, but it goes on sale on 12 September priced at NZ$599, and is available to pre-order from Microsoft right now.
That’s handy as Starfield — a big reason why Microsoft paid NZ$11 billion for Bethesda — is due out less than a week earlier, and it would be amazing if it weren’t an enormous space hog.
