General external expansion discussion? *spawn*

It's pretty close!

:(
Not how it works, but regardless don't expect game sizes to be anywhere close to 50% smaller.

I don't expect the SSD cartridge to be extortionatly priced. Given what we've seen from MS with pretty much anything regarding pricing.

Edit @BRiT
This was about the Xbox ssd cartridge? Well guess first part isn't specifically.
 
Last edited:
Ability to sell to a market.
The "ability" to sell to a captive market kind of suggests that Microsoft's goal here is intentionally to limit their customer's options for expanding internal storage, but I don't get what's in it for Microsoft? Open licensing for a purpose-designed NVMe drive that is guaranteed compatible with Series S/X seems like a very good idea because it makes it easy for owners to buy something with confidence, but why limit options? Why isn't the approach the same of officially licensed controllers that are guaranteed to work with Xbox and/or PlayStation?

Right - I was thinking the storage price drop would be more related to the cost of the chips at a fair market price rather than Seagate just charging a flat rate in perpetuity. Presumably, there's a cost reduction plan for the flash as MS brought it up during HotChips. I suppose the contract may or may not be renegotiated after the initial contracted supplies are delivered for X-dollars.

Sure, bit if I'm Seagate and there is no competition for my drives why would I price it competitively. When you remove free market forces, you remove competitive pricing. If I could sell sandwiches to hungry rich people for $500 a pop because there was no alternative, I definitely would. :yes:
 
I hope there will be secondary sources for the Xbox Series Cards, but we'll have to wait and see how that goes. I'm not holding out hope, but will take the pleasant surprise if it happens.
Maybe that's part of the deal. I don't know what is different/bespoke about the Seagate Xbox NVMe cards, I assume it would work in any PC as well but perhaps Seagate aren't envisaging selling these outside of the Xbox ecosystems - not in a competitive open market so maybe the quid pro quo is Seagate can sell it a little above NVMe market value for that speed/capacity because it is a bespoke licensed product. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
In the end they'll be competitively priced compared to the high speed Sony required drives IMO.

It's simple: XSS games are going to be smaller so the 512 GB is likely less of a problem than the XSX and PS5 sizes. Of those, the PS5 is worse than the XSX as the PS5 has a smaller drive. It's just logic. The PS5 is the 4K console with the smallest drive.
 
Maybe seagate gave them the best price.
So out the gate good price, then after year it opens up to other third parties?
We don't know how long the exclusive period is, but it may have been the best way to get best price initially.

"Competition" doesn't always lead to reduced prices.
 
In the end they'll be competitively priced compared to the high speed Sony required drives IMO.

Slow drives are cheaper than fast drives, yes. :yes: They are not competitively priced, because they are not competing. That's the essence of competitive pricing.

It's simple: XSS games are going to be smaller so the 512 GB is likely less of a problem than the XSX and PS5 sizes. Of those, the PS5 is worse than the XSX as the PS5 has a smaller drive. It's just logic. The PS5 is the 4K console with the smallest drive.
You say that, yet games like RDR2 are smaller on PS4 And we know PS5 has fined grained control about what is installed in terms of single player/multiplayer/language packs. Let's see how things actually look in two months :yes:
 
Why isn't the approach the same of officially licensed controllers that are guaranteed to work with Xbox and/or PlayStation?

Just my simpleton view, but it's the same 3D NAND ICs in the consoles right? Seagate doesn't manufacture their own right? Maybe Microsoft & Seagate teamed up to buy the chips in bulk for the console & the cards? A large percentage are earmarked for the consoles, what's left Seagate gets to use in the cards? I doubt other peripheral manufactures would get as a good of a deal as what Seagate & Microsoft procured?

Tommy McClain
 
Just my simpleton view, but it's the same 3D NAND ICs in the consoles right? Seagate doesn't manufacture their own right?
Until iSupply get both and butcher them for a visual inspection, we won't know but it's unlikely. Like other types of IC, semiconductor cells intended for SSDs are binned so either Sony are getting these super cheap or Microsoft are paying over the odds - there is no other conclusion. You don't pay for ICs based on what you intend to do with them but what they are qualified for.

Maybe Microsoft & Seagate teamed up to buy the chips in bulk for the console & the cards? A large percentage are earmarked for the consoles, what's left Seagate gets to use in the cards? I doubt other peripheral manufactures would get as a good of a deal as what Seagate & Microsoft procured?
If there were 400 million Xbox Series X/S consoles and Seagate's investment was risky they might ask Microsoft to spread the cost but it's not. Seagate are getting in on the ground floor (0 users currently) so their initial investment is minimal and they can monitor and adapt as the nextgen Xbox user base grows.
 
You don't pay for ICs based on what you intend to do with them but what they are qualified for.

Microsoft has said the performance of the internal & external SSD are identical. That was the whole point of making the proprietary module. They would then be buying the same qualified ICs.

Tommy McClain
 
Microsoft has said the performance of the internal & external SSD are identical. That was the whole point of making the proprietary module. They would then be buying the same qualified ICs.
Apologies I thought you were referring to the cells in Series S/X and PS5! But even so, Microsoft and Seagate combined are not needing so many cells to service Microsoft's nextgen consoles needs as to require Seagate to need Microsoft investment. The numbers are a drop in the ocean compared to the whole market. The same is true if you toss in PS5.
 
I was doing some library maintenance on the OneX, copying from an external 4TB HDD to external 2TB SSD took around 65 seconds for 8.2 GB. Would be around 6.5 minutes for a 50 GB game. Maybe juggling on next-gen wont be so painful even moving between internal NVME and external old school SSD.
 
In 2022 I think all the the consoles, including Series S, will be included more internal storage by storage.

It's odd how PS5's super fast I/O is being turned into a negative. The reverse spin on this same sentiment is by 2022 Series X will be the 4K console with the worst loading times because can't take advantage of cheap, widely-available fast NVMe drives. 7-8Gb/sec is fast now, it won't be in two years. In four years it'll feel positively be lethargic. And Series X is around half that. :???:

I wouldn't be so sure about that. The Samsung XP941 (first gen Samsung NVME) came out in 2014 rated at 1.5 GB/s. The SM951 (second gen Samsung NVME) came out in 2015 rated for 2150 GB/s. 5 years later we're finally hitting 7 GB/s at the end of this year, but relatively exotic cooling is being used to keep heat in check so that those drives don't throttle during sustained reads.

I just recently looked at new NVME drives and 3.5 GB/s drives are hitting above 70c in sustained writes without a heatsink for the better ones. The ones with worse controllers and/or less qualified NAND chips are throttling during sustained reads at those speeds.

I'm not sure there's going to be significant increases in speed this generation that will bring the price of 7 GB/s drives down to mainstream price points.

The other thing that's been notable is that in order to reach those speeds overall capacity is less. Likely due to NAND leveraging stacking in order to increase capacity. That's a challenge to ensure all layers are cooled well enough that you don't need to start throttling if you're pushing faster speeds and need to dissipate the heat from those chips.

Looking at the state of NVME drives currently, it's easy to see why MS has gone with a conservative 2.4 GB/s sustained read speed. Even in a relatively hot environment it should still be able to keep the drive cool enough that it can sustain reads over any length of time without cooling becoming too exotic.

Regards,
SB
 
The "ability" to sell to a captive market kind of suggests that Microsoft's goal here is intentionally to limit their customer's options for expanding internal storage, but I don't get what's in it for Microsoft? Open licensing for a purpose-designed NVMe drive that is guaranteed compatible with Series S/X seems like a very good idea because it makes it easy for owners to buy something with confidence, but why limit options? Why isn't the approach the same of officially licensed controllers that are guaranteed to work with Xbox and/or PlayStation?

You mean like Insomniac having to go for a very conservative 20 MB/s for Spiderman because they couldn't know what aftermarket drives a user would put in their PS4?

We have yet to see what if anything Sony will do to ensure that a user only puts in a drive that meets minimum performance requirements. We've only gotten some vague statements about what speed a consumer should look at when buying a drive to add in, but almost nothing else. If it ends up being like PS4 where there aren't any safeguards in place to guarantee a minimum performance level, it's possible that some developers may chose to target a speed lower than what the PS5's internal drive is capable of.

We do know that MS are very serious about guaranteeing a minimum performance level when it comes to extra storage added by the user. What we don't know is whether MS have a licensing and/or certification process to allow any interested SSD maker to make a drive for XBSX/XBSS.

Regards,
SB
 
I wouldn't be so sure about that. The Samsung XP941 (first gen Samsung NVME) came out in 2014 rated at 1.5 GB/s. The SM951 (second gen Samsung NVME) came out in 2015 rated for 2150 GB/s. 5 years later we're finally hitting 7 GB/s at the end of this year, but relatively exotic cooling is being used to keep heat in check so that those drives don't throttle during sustained reads.
What you see in the consumer space is cheap-to-manufacture (but high-priced) larger-node solid state semiconductor cells being used in drives which is fine when everybody has been bound by the PCI 3.x bus speeds since 2013/14. There are much faster solid state semiconductor cells but nobody is used these in drives intended to be plugged into a slow bus because that just would be stupid.

You mean like Insomniac having to go for a very conservative 20 MB/s for Spiderman because they couldn't know what aftermarket drives a user would put in their PS4?

No, this is nothing alike. Seriously, really?!? :???: Sony did not limit what type of drive you can use in PS4 and there were consequences for devs for that lack of foresight, this is not the situation on PS5 as you well know, nor are Sony limiting options to one manufacturer. My post was about lack of consumer choice for expanding the Series S/X solid state storage by only having Seagate as an option where the option is, you buy Seagate or you f*** off. If Seagate want to charge over market price for capacity, you again have the choice to pay or to f*** off.

If Seagate want to promote their drives to PS5 onwers, they'll be competing on price with everybody else who also wishes to sell NVMe drives to PS5 owners.
 
What you see in the consumer space is cheap-to-manufacture (but high-priced) larger-node solid state semiconductor cells being used in drives which is fine when everybody has been bound by the PCI 3.x bus speeds since 2013/14. There are much faster solid state semiconductor cells but nobody is used these in drives intended to be plugged into a slow bus because that just would be stupid.



No, this is nothing alike. Seriously, really?!? :???: Sony did not limit what type of drive you can use in PS4 and there were consequences for devs for that lack of foresight, this is not the situation on PS5 as you well know, nor are Sony limiting options to one manufacturer. My post was about lack of consumer choice for expanding the Series S/X solid state storage by only having Seagate as an option where the option is, you buy Seagate or you f*** off. If Seagate want to charge over market price for capacity, you again have the choice to pay or to f*** off.

If Seagate want to promote their drives to PS5 onwers, they'll be competing on price with everybody else who also wishes to sell NVMe drives to PS5 owners.

So what happens if i take a current PCI-E 4 nvme drive that only does 4GB/s and put it in the ps5 ? What happens if I put in a PCI E 3.0 drive from 2013 that does 1.5GB/s . What if i buy the cheapest 6GB/s or 7GB/s nvme drive i can find but its trash and runs really hot ?

I can't wait to see the answers for all this
 
So what happens if i take a current PCI-E 4 nvme drive that only does 4GB/s and put it in the ps5 ? What happens if I put in a PCI E 3.0 drive from 2013 that does 1.5GB/s . What if i buy the cheapest 6GB/s or 7GB/s nvme drive i can find but its trash and runs really hot ?
What are you plugging these drives into? :???:
 
Back
Top