As with all devices with a dedicated operating system, the Xbox Series X OS will be taking quite a bit of space on the internal 1TB SSD.

To be exact, the Xbox Series OS (and other system related files and operations) will be taking up 198GB of the internal 1TB SSD that ships with the console. Meaning come November, buyers will only have 802GB of usable space that they can use to download games, media applications, recording, game saves and other types of related data.

To compare, the original Xbox One and PS4 shipped with a 500GB hard drive, with 138GB reserved for the Xbox One OS and system files and 92GB for the PS4. Moving up, the Xbox One X reserved about 220GB according to Forbes, with the PS4 Pro reportedly reserving somewhere between 200-220GB.

Of course this news of space being reserved should come to no surprise to anyone as there has always been some allocation on hard disc for the consoles’ operating system. Still, this does give us a better look at what space we actually have to use now, which is a bit less than most were assuming.

All it really means is that users will need to now better manage what they download and keep on the system if they opt out to not wanting to get an Xbox Series external 1TB expansion card. Of course the easiest and cost effective method though will be to use an external HDD, one you most likely already own for your Xbox console. You won’t be able to run Xbox Series X games off of it, but you can store them so that you can easily transfer them to the Xbox Series’ SSD, saving you a bit of time from actually downloading them. Additionally, owning a physical disc version of a game is another way to help manage disc space.

It’ll be interesting to see what the PS5 will be setting aside for reserved OS and system files, since the SSD is only 825GB compared to Xbox Series’ 1TB SSD. Guess we’ll know hopefully in the coming weeks as some hands-on experience are expected to go live soon. Both consoles will be launching this November.