Phil Spencer was on the defense again, this time about the fact that the Xbox One only comes standard with a 500GB hard drive. Spencer in a Twitter exchange says that he does understand the need for bigger hard drives, but he reminded everyone that you can use external USB hard drives to add additional storage. (Depending on which one you buy it might even be faster than the 500GB internal storage in the Xbox One from our own testing!)

In addition Spencer acknowledged the fact that Microsoft shipped the Advanced Warfare console with a 1TB hard drive, so he says they acknowledge the need for bigger hard drives. Still so far the Advanced Warfare console was announced as “Limited Edition” and there has been no word so far on a permeant 1TB Xbox One offering, but we have to think it is coming at some point soon.

With install sizes continuing to grow, it will have to happen, but our sources tell us that other than the Advanced Warfare console, there are no plans to do anything more about it this year. The standard go to answer will be to recommend external USB storage for the time being. It is not a perfect solution, but with the performance in many cases better than the internal drive, it is something that a lot of us are willing to live with.