Xbox Series S leak just revealed bad news for storage

(Prototype credit: Tom'due south Guide)

The Xbox Series S is positioned as a cheaper, more than attainable Xbox Series X, but with less powerful performance. Merely a recently revealed spec has revealed that this functioning is substantially worse in one key area.

According to a mail service on r/XboxSeriesX by Reddit user spead20 who alleges they have their Series Southward already, the 512GB SSD within the Series Southward only has 364GB of gratuitous space for games. Afterwards bookkeeping for the space taken upward past the operating system, the new console reportedly lets y'all utilize about 70% of the total advertised storage.

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The 148GB of Os comes with a precedent, as this is around the size of the Xbox I's Bone. Similarly, the Series Ten, which comes with a 1TB SSD, apparently has 20% of information technology ring-fenced for the OS. A quick bit of path pegs the Series 10 software at around 200GB, which would brand this claimed Series S effigy more credible.

The silver lining here is that Microsoft has said that games on the Series S volition take up less space than the same games saved to a Series X. That'south because information technology'due south offering 1440p and 4K versions of each game, accounting for the two machines' divergent performance capabilities.

Of course if you want more room Xbox is happy to sell y'all one of its special retentiveness expansion cards for £220/$220. These are very expensive, but since they use the same engineering science found in the chief SSD, they are promised to be just equally quick equally the default storage. Alternatively, yous can use any other USB HDD or SSD y'all might have, but this will only work for Xbox 1 games since Series Ten/Serial S games require the new storage system in order to piece of work properly.

On the other side of the next-gen console war, the PS5 also has an SSD — this i with 825GB of infinite. It also reserves about 20% for Bone functions, leaving 625GB for games from what previous rumors tell us. It'southward a like story to Xbox, but official expansions for the PS5's storage come in at $115 for an actress 500GB, a far more generous offer than Xbox's.

With games continually increasing in size to back up fancier graphics and other features, buying extra storage may be a necessity for all but the lightest users of the new consoles. The PS5 and Xbox Series X are both releasing next week, and so stay tuned to Tom's Guide for full coverage of all things next-gen.

Richard is a Tom's Guide staff writer based in London, roofing news, reviews and how-tos for phones, gaming, audio and whatever else people need advice on. Following on from his MA in Magazine Journalism at the University of Sheffield, he's also written for WIRED U.K., The Register and Artistic Bloq. When not at piece of work, he's probable thinking about how to brew the perfect cup of specialty coffee.