After choosing to reveal its collaborative effort during Microsoft’s gamescom press conference, Seagate has speedily released its Seagate Game Drive for Xbox into the wild. As such, it’s now time to weigh the device’s pros and cons and decide whether it’s worth a purchase for the many Xbox One owners out there.
If you’re reading this then you’re likely in need of more storage space for your current-gen console. It’s not surprising, and you’re certainly not alone, as this is a problem that has plagued a lot of early adopters, including ourselves. After all, both Microsoft and Sony chose to go the cheap route with the 500 gigabyte hard drives their launch SKUs shipped with, which is something that was obvious from the get-go.
Although the Xbox One supports much larger externals, and up to two at a time, this Game Drive’s 2 terabytes will likely supply with you more than enough space, at least for the time being. Then again, unless you buy a lot of games and never delete any of them, it’s very likely that this add-on will last you through this entire console generation. Of course, each user’s needs will vary.
Granted, this is merely one of many options for those who are looking for an external drive, though it separates itself from the pack using its unique outer shell. That’s because, instead of being black, red or any other common colour, Seagate’s latest is encased in Xbox Green, thanks to an official partnership with Bill Gates’ behemoth. Said partnership has also allowed the designers to adorn their product with the Xbox logo, which features alongside its manufacturer’s brand. This all culminates in a drive that — with a green top and smooth black bottom — looks surprisingly good on top of an Xbox One console and slides whenever it’s moved.
Actually connecting the Seagate Game Drive for Xbox to your console is supposed to be as simple as plugging its USB 3.0 cable into your console. Once that’s done, the system is supposed to read it and then prompt you to format it for use. That wasn’t the case on my end, though, because the drive wasn’t read until after I reset my system, and even then it only showed up as a locked media device.
After talking to Seagate’s technical support — who were very helpful and understanding — I eventually got things to work as planned, but it resulted in me having to unplug my other hard drive. I also moved the Seagate Game Drive to the back port, instead of the side one that it had been plugged into, just in case that’d help. The latter step shouldn’t have made a difference, being that both of the console’s USB ports are USB 3.0, so it’s likely that the system erred when it read the Game Drive for the first time because I had another hard drive plugged in.
Since that somewhat frustrating day, this swanky green Game Drive has been set as my default hard drive and has been doing a great job in that role. I’ve transferred a large install file to it, downloaded a couple of games to it, and also played both of those titles from it without issue. As such, I’m quite impressed with the thing outside of the formatting issues that originally drove me nuts. Then again, it’s likely that the drive wasn’t even to blame for those problems.
Coming in at a listing price of $100 USD, the officially branded Seagate Game Drive for Xbox is a tad more expensive than its peers. That said, it’s newer than a lot of the drives you’ll find on sale, and complements the Xbox One quite well. It also seems to be pretty well-made, which makes it a good option for those in need.
Note: The Seagate Game Drive is a 2.5 inch, 5400 RPM drive.
This review is based on a product that we were provided with.
