Legions of Xbox gamers can’t wait to get their hands on the latest in the popular Halo game franchise, Halo Wars 2, when it’s released on Feb. 21. Seagate today announced a perfect storage companion—the Seagate Game Drive for Xbox Halo Wars 2 Special Edition portable drive.
The new drive delivers 2TB of capacity, enough room for 50-plus Xbox games. That means gamers can free up precious storage space on their console’s internal hard drive while consolidating all their favorite games into a single location.
With the install sizes of blockbuster games like Halo 5: Guardians, Gears of War 4 and Forza Horizon 3 all exceeding 45GB, many gamers use external drives to boost the storage capacity of their Xbox One S or Xbox One console.
The latest Seagate Game Drive is small enough to fit in a pocket, allowing gamers to bring along an entire library of games to play at a friend’s house. And with its fast USB 3.0 connection, gamers will find the same speed and responsiveness as if they were playing from the console’s internal hard drive.
The Fast-Changing Needs of Gamers
“We’re doing more and more in the gaming space, which has a very rapid pace of change—change that’s all around the hot new game titles,” says Tim Bucher, SVP, consumer solutions group at Seagate. “Titles like Halo are really what drive console sales. And the data that’s coming from these new titles is phenomenal. And we want to help hard-core gamers make the best use of as much of that data as they possibly can.”
Big Franchise, Big Game Demand
More than 70 million Halo games have sold since the series debuted in 2001. Halo Wars 2 is a sequel to the best-selling real-time strategy game, Halo Wars, which launched in 2009. When the trailer⇗ for the new game debuted at the E3 show last June, “fans went wild,” said Seagate’s Eber Legarreta.
Halo is a big franchise—the kind of blockbuster game that can help drive more demand from gamers for years to come — they demand that they can easily make the most of the dense visuals, sounds and effects in every awesome new game! So naturally an estimated 68 exabytes of hard drives will ship into consumer-electronics applications like game consoles in 2020, according to IDC.
This marks the second special-edition HDD Seagate has developed with Microsoft’s Xbox team, following last year’s 2TB Gears of War 4® Special Edition drive.
“These are some of the most popular games that are coming out for the Xbox console,” says Eber Legarreta, product marketing manager at Seagate. “The drive looks great next to the Xbox. I think Halo fans will like that.”
Seagate worked closely with Microsoft’s Xbox team and 343 Industries, the developers of the Halo games, for the new drive’s design. Emblazoned on its cover is Atriox⇗, leader of an alien faction known as the Banished (see sidebar). In marketing material for the game, Atriox is described as “a deadly warrior and a brilliant military leader in control of a massive army.”
Face of the Game
“Microsoft and 343 Industries asked us to put Atriox on our drive, since he’s the face of this game,” Legarreta explains. “They submitted a design idea for us, we came back with some suggestions and we jointly arrived at the finished product.”
The new drive incorporated a “sublimation-printing” process, in which heat is used to transfer artwork onto plastic, paper or fabric. The process offers more detail than traditional printing techniques.
“We’ve really taken a step up in terms of the technology we’re using to create the look and feel of these special-edition drives,” says Bucher. “The graphics just pop on this drive, including the silver embossed Xbox and Seagate logos, and that’s really important if you want it to look good with your gear.”
The Seagate Game Drive for Xbox Halo Wars 2 Special Edition portable drive will ship later this month for $99.99 and can be purchased at Game Stop and Amazon.
