Over the past couple of years, PCs have slowly migrated over to flash storage. Increasingly, OEM devices are shipping with SSDs by default as hard drives are getting moved the wayside. One area where hard drives are still the default is consoles. In an effort to help boost storage capacity and performance, Seagate is releasing their new Seagate Game Drive SSD for the Xbox.
As a portable external drive for the Xbox, the Game Drive will allow users to archive some of their less played games and free up space on the console. With 512GB capacity, that should be plenty for most usage cases. Being portable also makes it easier to transport it around and bringing your titles to other consoles. It should also be able to function as an external USB 3.0 SSD for regular use.
One major benefit with the Game Drive SSD is the improved performance compared to a hard drive. This should drastically cut down on load times. Seagate has previously released HDD versions of the Game Drive in 2TB and 4TB capacities. I suppose the SSD would be optimal for reducing load and times and suffering less risk of shock damage. However, I think capacity would be a more important characteristic for archiving.
As expected from the declining SSD prices, the MSRP is $199 which is pretty standard for a drive of this capacity. There is no word yet on the type of NAND or the controller being used. The big surprise is that Seagate is choosing to go after the gamer instead of the consumer for their SDDs.
