Designed for Xbox premiered its first collection with a variety of gaming accessories in playful pastel tones last spring. This year, it's time to sparkle and shine for Designed for Xbox's second collection! The new Designed for Xbox Summer Collection 2023 will include 7 shimmery, glimmery accessories for every Xbox player wanting to outsparkle the competition. Designed especially for you and crafted by our amazing partners, each product brings a unique flare that will surely brighten up any gaming session.

PowerA Advantage Wired Controller for Xbox Series X|S - Sparkle
Add some stellar style and performance to your game with the PowerA Advantage Wired Controller for Xbox Series X|S in an all-new purple sparkle design. With glittering swirls of purple and gold, this one-of-a-kind controller looks like it was sent from a deep-space nebula. Licensed by Xbox, this controller features two mappable Advanced Gaming Buttons you can program on-the-fly, and 3-Way Trigger Locks for game-specific trigger depth. Works great on Windows 10/11 too. Quality backed with a 2-year limited warranty.

In today's world demand for visual brilliance and digital content creation is skyrocketing, paving the way for more advanced technologies that support the production and consumption of rich content. For consumers, students, and professionals, fast, reliable tools are a must-have to keep their imaginations flowing. Building upon its award-winning SSD portfolio, Western Digital released the WD Blue SN580 NVMe solid state drive (SSD). The new, NVMe PCIe Gen 4.0 internal flash drive is purpose-built for the creative enthusiast community and professionals to use when upgrading current PCs or elevating a custom build.

"As creator workflows become more robust and complex with heavy applications and large multimedia assets like 4K video, it's easy to become frustrated with long load times," said Eric Spanneut, vice president of client and enterprise SSDs for Western Digital. "The new WD Blue SN580 NVMe SSD boosts productivity, so professionals and entrepreneurial creators can focus on bringing their imaginations to life without having to wait long for files to transfer or programs to load."

[Editor's note: Our in-depth review of the SN580 is now live]

News reports about Western Digital's implementation of new security measures started appearing online last week—My Cloud product owners were puzzled upon discovering that their access to cloud services had been blocked. Devices not updated with the latest firmware - version 5.26.202 (My Cloud) and 9.4.1-101 (My Cloud Home, SanDisk ibi) - were and continue to be barred from the start date effective June 15. This relatively new measure has been implemented in order to prevent further exploits of security vulnerabilities. WD is likely shoring up its online defenses following a major cyber attack on its My Cloud back in March, a hacker group demanded a hefty ransom fee for the return of private customer data. WD restored My Cloud services by mid-May, and released several software updates and security fixes.

According to a company security bulletin (issued last week): "Devices on firmware below 5.26.202 will not be able to connect to Western Digital cloud services starting June 15, 2023, and users will not be able to access data on their device through mycloud.com and the My Cloud OS 5 mobile app until they update the device to the latest firmware...Users can continue to access their data via Local Access." The latest fixes should protect customers from unauthorized access and ransomware attacks, but WD has not provided any further news about any ongoing negotiations with the hacker group behind the Spring data breach.

It appears that Western Digital is getting ready to expand its budget line of WD Blue SSDs with yet another model, this time a smaller jump from the SN570 to the SN580, compared to the jump in model numbers from the SN550 to the SN570. The drive has passed through the PCI-SIG integrators list and from that information we only know it's a PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive with a four lane interface. However, some retailers have already put up the drive for pre-order and this helps us with a few more details.

For starters, it appears that we're once again looking at drives in the 500 GB to the 2 TB range, although this doesn't mean that WD couldn't launch a 4 TB variant as well, but it seems unlikely. What we also learnt is that these product pages are place holders, as the drives are listed for the same, or higher pricing than the WD Black SN850X, which makes no sense for a budget drive which should be closer to the US$100/€100 mark than the equivalent of twice that. Another European retailer is also listing the current SN570 as being EOL:ed on the 31st of July, suggesting that the SN580 should launch around that date. The same retailer is listing the SN580 as the replacement drive under its part number, which is WDS200T3B0E for the 2 TB SKU.

Western Digital introduced the WD Black SN850P M.2 NVMe Gen 4 SSD for PlayStation 5 game consoles, which is an officially-licensed PlayStation 5 accessory. The drive can also used with PCs. It comes with a factory-fitted heatsink, and has been extensively tested for compatibility with the game console. The drive comes in three capacity-based variants—1 TB (WDBBYV0010BNC-WRSN), 2 TB (WDBBYV0020BNC-WRSN), and 4 TB (WDBBYV0040BNC-WRSN. All three models offer sequential read speeds of up to 7.3 GB/s, and while the 1 TB variant offers up to 6.3 GB/s sequential writes, the 2 TB and 4 TB ones are rated for up to 6.6 GB/s sequential writes. Their write endurance is rated at 600 TBW, 1,200 TBW, and 2,400 TBW, respectively. Western Digital is backing these drives with 5-year warranties. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Western Digital has officially unveiled its WD_BLACK C50 expansion card lineup for Microsoft's current generation Xbox Series X and S consoles, to not much surprise given that one of these products was leaked back in Spring of this year. Best Buy preempted Western Digital's announcement just over two months ago when a listing for the WD_BLACK C50 1 TB model appeared on their store site. Seagate has been the official partner (with Microsoft) for the manufacture and distribution of Xbox Series console storage expansion cards since launch time (November 2020), and has recently adjusted their pricing - possibly in anticipation of Western Digital's cheaper third party alternatives.

Xbox Series console owners have often complained about the system's expensive proprietary storage expansion ecosystem (relative to Sony's PlayStation 5 utilizing industry standard M.2 SSDs), so new competition in this highly controlled market segment is welcome. Two WD_BLACK C50 expansion cards are now available from today - in the shape of 1T B ($149.99) and 500 GB ($79.99) models. Susan Park, vice president, global strategic partnerships at Western Digital has introduced these new offerings: "Xbox consoles have been a much beloved gaming staple in households around the globe for decades. With the introduction of the WD_BLACK C50 Expansion Card for Xbox, gamers can continue to enjoy their favorite games with more flexibility so they can focus on accomplishing their next mission or defeating their final boss." Western Digital specifies that these units come with a five-year long warranty, and a further incentive for purchase is an included one-month trial of Game Pass Ultimate.

Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today reported fiscal third quarter 2023 financial results. "Over the last several years, our team has focused on enhancing business agility and delivering a range of innovative, industry-leading products that address the increasing data storage demands of our customers," said David Goeckeler, Western Digital CEO. "The groundwork we laid, combined with the actions we have taken since the beginning of this fiscal year to right-size and refocus our businesses, have enabled us to navigate a dynamic environment. I am pleased that we delivered non-GAAP gross margin at the higher end of our guidance range due to strong execution across both our HDD and Flash businesses."

Microsoft's official Xbox Twitter account has today announced that its official range of Xbox Series console storage expansion cards has been reduced in price: "Think of all the new games you'll be able to download and play now 👀. The Seagate Storage Expansion Card is now available starting at a lower price: xbx.lv/41e8t57." It is slightly odd that Seagate itself has not announced this lowering of gaming product MSRPs, but today's changes only affect the US market - European and UK listings feature the old prices (at the time of writing). It is not clear whether this discount is a permanent or temporary thing, but the latter is a more likely situation given rumors from last month.

It is very possible that Seagate is reacting to new competition - last month a Best Buy listing revealed that Western Digital is lining up to provide third party storage expansion cards for Xbox Series console owners. The leak of WD's incoming offerings indicated that it would be undercutting its arch rival in terms of pricing, at least with the single model that leaked (1 TB at $179.99) - Seagate has a timed exclusive agreement with Microsoft/Xbox for the licensed production/selling of proprietary cards. The officially sanctioned price drop brings the cards to more reasonable value levels, but Xbox owners have largely agreed that MSRPs were inflated from the beginning. The entry-level 512 GB Seagate model now costs $89.99 (a $50 reduction), the 1 TB model is now available at $149.99 (a $70 reduction) and the top-end 2 TB model gets the largest price slash (of $120) which brings it down to $279.99. Seagate appears to be undercutting WD's BLACK C50 1 TB model (if the Best Buy info leak price was accurate) by $30 with the official 1 TB storage expansion card.

Western Digital has declared that its My Cloud online service has been compromised by a group of hackers late last month: "On March 26, 2023, Western Digital identified a network security incident involving Western Digital's systems. In connection with the ongoing incident, an unauthorized third party gained access to a number of the Company's systems. Upon discovery of the incident, the Company implemented incident response efforts and initiated an investigation with the assistance of leading outside security and forensic experts. This investigation is in its early stages and Western Digital is coordinating with law enforcement authorities."

The statement, issued on April 4, continues: "The Company is implementing proactive measures to secure its business operations including taking systems and services offline and will continue taking additional steps as appropriate. As part of its remediation efforts, Western Digital is actively working to restore impacted infrastructure and services. Based on the investigation to date, the Company believes the unauthorized party obtained certain data from its systems and is working to understand the nature and scope of that data. While Western Digital is focused on remediating this security incident, it has caused and may continue to cause disruption to parts of the Company's business operations."

It appears that Western Digital is readying its own line of Xbox Series X|S Storage Expansion cards, and undercutting its big rival - Seagate - in a currently exclusive storage solution market. Word spread across several gaming communities over the past weekend about a new listing on Best Buy, now removed as of late April 2, for a 1 TB capacity WD_BLACK C50 Expansion Card with an asking price of $179.99. WD has offered official external storage solutions for the current generation of Xbox home games consoles, under its WD_BLACK range, but Microsoft granted exclusive manufacturing rights to Seagate for the proprietary Xbox Series X|S storage expansion card system. According to official site information and documentation, these expansion cards are effective in "delivering additional external memory while maintaining the same peak speed and performance as the console's internal SSD".

The Seagate range could have been a timed exclusive, and based on the now deleted Best Buy listing, Microsoft seems to have handed a license to WD. The 1 TB WD_BLACK C50 Expansion Card's pricing was a big talking point, due to it being substantially cheaper than the equivalent capacity Seagate model ($219.99) - a saving of forty dollars, which is an encouraging sign for gamers who have long complained that the Xbox proprietary expansion card offers bad value for money. Seagate's current crop of cards start at $139.99 (512 GB) and go up to $399.99 (2 TB).

TrendForce's latest investigations reveal that the global NAND Flash market has been facing a demand headwind since 2H22. In response, the supply chain has been scrambling to clear out inventory, driving down NAND Flash contract prices by 20-25%. Enterprise SSD took the brunt of the fall with prices plummeting 23-28%. Despite manufacturers lowering prices in an attempt to drive up demand, clients are hesitant to purchase more components for fear of overstock. As a result, NAND Flash bit shipments rose by a mere 5.3% as ASP fell 22.8%. Global NAND Flash revenue was reported to be US$10.29 billion in 4Q22—down 25% QoQ.

TrendForce reports that Kioxia and Micron saw both a reduction in production and price in 4Q22. Kioxia's revenue plunged 30.5% due to weak demand from PC and smartphone clients and data centers readjusting their inventory. Micron generated a quarterly revenue of US$1.1 billion—a staggering 34.7% QoQ drop—that has led them to drastically decrease their capacity utilization rate for fabs. Luckily, Micron was able to ship their 232-layer client SSDs in 4Q22 as scheduled, and with the 176-layer QLC enterprise SSD hot on its heels, Micron's bit shipments are predicted to steadily improve in 2023 with their revenue climbing gradually quarter by quarter.

Looking back at 2H22, as server OEMs slowed down the momentum of their product shipments, Chinese server buyers also held a conservative outlook on future demand and focused on inventory reduction. Thus, the flow of orders for enterprise SSDs remained sluggish. However, NAND Flash suppliers had to step up shipments of enterprise SSDs during 2H22 because the demand for storage components equipped in notebook (laptop) computers and smartphones had undergone very large downward corrections. Compared with other categories of NAND Flash products, enterprise SSDs represented the only significant source of bit consumption. Ultimately, due to the imbalance between supply and demand, the QoQ decline in prices of enterprise SSDs widened to 25% for 4Q22. This price plunge, in turn, caused the quarterly total revenue from enterprise SSDs to drop by 27.4% QoQ to around US$3.79 billion. TrendForce projects that the NAND Flash industry will again post a QoQ decline in the revenue from this product category for 1Q23.

To help consumers preserve their ever-growing digital world, Western Digital's WD brand is expanding its trusted My Book Desktop Storage lineup. Built upon a legacy of technology innovation, the company has released its highest capacity consumer drive ever with the 22 TB My Book Desktop Hard Drive, giving people greater flexibility to store more of what they love.

"Consumers continue generating data at a rapid pace. In 2022 alone, the average household worldwide generated more than 20 TB of data and we expect this number to continue to rise as people continue to consume and create more data," said John Rydning, research vice president, Global DataSphere at International Data Corporation (IDC), a global market intelligence firm. "While many people rely on the cloud, we know consumers are looking for local storage at their fingertips to help them preserve and readily control their growing amount of personal and business data."

Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today reported fiscal second quarter 2023 financial results. "The Western Digital team delivered revenue at the high end of our guidance range, despite a challenging flash price environment and continued cloud inventory digestion," said David Goeckeler, Western Digital CEO. "We continue to take action to reset the business in response to the post-pandemic environment by optimizing our cost structure and strengthening our liquidity.

These actions, including strategically reducing our capital expenditures across both flash and HDD and our operating expenses, as well as amending our financial covenants and securing recent financings, will give us the financial flexibility and optionality to weather this cycle, while also positioning us to continue executing our product roadmap and furthering our technical leadership over the long term."

Western Digital has launched its first dual actuator hard drive, in the shape of the Ultrastar DC HS760 Hard Drive, which is currently only available in a single 20 TB SKU. This places WD's new drive head to head with Seagates Exos X20 drives, although Seagate offers an 18 and a 20 TB SKU. WD offers the Ultrastar DC HS760 with a SAS interface, whereas Seagate offers its Exos drives with either SATA or SAS connectivity. Both companies are using traditional CMR platters that spin at 7,200 RPM.

WD didn't provide too many details when it comes to the performance of the Ultrastar DC HS760, as the company only claims it offers twice the sequential throughput and 1.7 times higher random performance compared with the Ultrastar DC HC560. WD appears to have a potential performance advantage over Seagate, as WD has integrated its OptiNAND technology based on WD's iNAND, which means that the Ultrastar DC HS760 should have at least twice as much cache as Seagates Exos X20 drives which top out at 256 MB. This is based on WD's DC HC560 drives which ship with 512 MB of cache. Just like Seagates Exos drives, the Ultrastar DC HS760 is a helium filled drive and WD claims 2.5 million MTBF time and offers a five year warranty. No pricing was revealed.

TrendForce reports that the recent easing of tight supply for components has led to rising shipments for enterprise servers. Furthermore, ODMs for the most part have been able to sustain the momentum of data center build-out with the demand from ByteDance and the tenders issued by Chinese telecom companies. Nevertheless, the performance of the enterprise SSD market on the whole has been impacted by falling NAND Flash prices. For 3Q22, the NAND Flash industry's enterprise SSD revenue dropped by 28.7% QoQ to US$5.22 billion. Furthermore, all enterprise SSD suppliers recorded a negative performance for the period as well.

Regarding individual enterprise SSD suppliers' revenue figures for 3Q22, Samsung posted around US$2.12 billion. Its market share also shrank to 40.6% from 44.5% in 2Q22. Samsung's performance was mainly dragged down by the decline in its NAND Flash ASP. In the aspect of product development, SSDs featuring 128L NAND Flash and PCIe 4.0 will remain Samsung's main offerings for enterprise storage during 2023.

Western Digital Corp. (Nasdaq: WDC) today reported fiscal first quarter 2023 financial results. "I am pleased to see the Western Digital team work together to deliver revenue at the upper half of the guidance range and operating income at the upper half as implied by the midpoints of our guidance, in the midst of an incredibly dynamic and challenging macroeconomic environment," said David Goeckeler, Western Digital CEO. "Overall, the organizational and portfolio improvements we have made over the past few years have equipped us to effectively manage through this consumer-led downturn, which is showing signs of stabilization. As we remain focused on innovation and execution, I am optimistic that Western Digital will emerge stronger as we continue to ramp multiple new products into data centers worldwide and market conditions improve."

According to a TrendForce investigations, memory pricing began to decline from 4Q21 due to weakening demand for certain consumer electronics. Coupled with the impact of rising inflation, the Russian-Ukrainian war, and pandemic policies, demand in peak season was weak, resulting in inventory pressure that has extended from the buyer side to manufacturers. In response to the aforementioned situation, Micron announced last week that it would cut production of DRAM and NAND Flash, becoming the first major memory manufacturer to officially reduce its capacity utilization plan. In terms of NAND Flash, the market situation is more severe than that of DRAM. As the average contract price of mainstream capacity wafers has fallen to their cash cost and is approaching the periphery of selling at a loss for various manufacturers, Kioxia also announced that it will reduce NAND Flash capacity utilization by 30% from October on the heels of Micron's announcement.

In terms of DRAM, current contract pricing remains higher than the total production cost of various mainstream suppliers. Therefore, compared with NAND Flash, it remains to be seen whether there will be a significant reduction in production. In addition to mentioning the slight reduction in capacity utilization in this sector currently, Micron mainly emphasized its sharp downward revision of capital expenditures in 2023 and that the annual growth of DRAM production bits next year will only be around 5%. TrendForce believes, according to Micron, to actualize such conservative bit growth means that there is still room for a significant downward revision in capacity utilization and the extent to which Micron's subsequent production reductions are implemented remains to be seen.

According to TrendForce research, material supply improvement and spiking demand for enterprise SSDs from North American hyperscale data center and enterprise clients in 2Q22 coupled with the Kioxia contamination incident in 1Q22 prompted customers to ramp up procurement to avoid future supply shortages. Manufacturers also give priority to meeting the needs of server customers due to the high pricing of enterprise SSD. In the second quarter, overall revenue of the enterprise SSD market increased by 31.3% to US$7.32 billion.

As the market leader, Samsung has grown its enterprise SSD revenue to US$3.26 billion with the recovery of enterprise SSD procurement. Especially in the second quarter, when orders for other consumer products continued to decline, enterprise SSD became the company's outlet for reducing production capacity. At present, Samsung has been continuously investing in the development of next-generation transmission specification products such as the CXL 2.0 product released at the Flash Summit in early August, in order to maintain a leading position in the market.

With only three major players left in the hard disk drive market-Seagate, Toshiba and WDC-the shipment of hard drives ought to be fairly stable, but demand is down across all manufacturers by anything from close to 30 percent to around 40 percent in the case of Toshiba. According to data from Trendfocus that was posted by Storage Newsletter, demand is down across all market segments or at best case flat compared to last year. Nearline enterprise drives remained flat at around 19 million units compared to last year, but performance enterprise storage is down to around 2.5 million units for the last quarter.

On the desktop and consumer electronics side of things, things are even more dire, with both 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drive shipments dropping by 30 and 40 percent respectively. Around 13 million 3.5-inch hard drives and 11 million 2.5-inch drives were still shipped in Q2, but with lower demand for computers and more and more computers moving to SSDs, hard drives have been relegated to backup duties when it comes to most consumer purchases. Seagate was the company least affected by the drop in demand, but is still seeing close to a 30 percent drop in demand, with WDC second at over 30 percent and Toshiba, as mentioned, by maybe as much as 40 percent, which doesn't bode well for the company, as it's the smallest manufacturer of hard drives.

Western Digital Corp. and Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC ("SIE") teamed up to deliver the industry's first official PlayStation -licensed M.2 SSD for PlayStation 5 (PS5) to gamers across the globe. The WD_BLACK SN850 NVMe SSD for PS5 Consoles enables players to expand the high-speed storage capacity of their PS5 console and gives them peace of mind knowing that their new and favorite titles are stored on a drive that's been battletested to take on the most intensive PS5 gameplay.

Optimized for the newest-generation console, Western Digital validated drive performance through multiple scenarios to ensure the drive has been fully tested for the PS5. This process included hundreds of hours spent rigorously testing some of the most graphic-rich titles across various genres to ensure that with games stored on the drive, gameplay is fast, smooth and visually immersive.

According to TrendForce research, North American data centers saw an improvement in components supply after February, driving a recovery in purchase order volume. As Server brands returned to normal in-office work following the pandemic, the increase in capital expenditures on related information equipment has also boosted order growth. The addition of Kioxia's raw material contamination incident led to an increase in the pricing of certain rush orders, pushing up overall Enterprise SSD revenue in 1Q22 to US$5.58 billion, or 14.1% growth QoQ.

According to TrendForce, Samsung and SK hynix (including Solidigm) were the top two players in 1Q22. At the beginning of the year, demand from hyperscale data centers resulted in high inventory levels due to component mismatches, leading Samsung's order growth missing expectations. However, as repercussions from the WDC and Kioxia contamination incident hit NAND Flash production capacity in 1Q22, server customers quickly turned to Samsung for additional orders, driving the company's 1Q22 revenue to US$2.77 billion, up 14.8% QoQ.

According to TrendForce research, as manufacturers actively shifted production capacity to 128 layer products, the market turned to oversupply, resulting in a drop in contract prices in 1Q22, among which the decline in consumer-grade products was more pronounced. Although enterprise SSD purchase order volume has grown, demand for smart phone bits has weakened due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, the traditional off-season, and rising inflation. Client inventories have increased significantly, so it remains challenging for overall bit shipment volume to offset potential decline. In 1Q22, NAND Flash bit shipments and average selling prices fell by 0.5% and 2.3%, respectively, resulting in a 3.0% quarterly decrease in overall industry revenue to US$17.92 billion.

Although China's smartphone stocking momentum was marginally weak considering the off-season, due to sluggish supply on the part of Kioxia and WDC, Samsung's 1Q22 client SSD shipment bit growth was driven up by an influx of rush orders and North American enterprise SSD client orders also recovered significantly in March. Overall bit shipments increased by 9% QoQ and ASP decreased by 2% QoQ. In 1Q22, the NAND Flash portion of Samsung's electronics business posted revenue of US$6.32 billion, up 3.4% QoQ.

Last week, Micron revealed its NAND flash plans and so did Western Digital during its investors day. The different NAND flash manufacturers use similar, but far from identical ways to manufacture their NAND flash and WD is working together with Kioxia and the two are using a process called bit column stacked or BiCS NAND. This year the two companies will move to its sixth generation of BiCS NAND which is stacking 162-layers of NAND flash. Most of their competitors are already at 176-layer stacks, although WD and Kioxia still deliver the same capacity NAND chips as its competitors. WD claims that their die size is smaller than the competition, which could be an advantage due to more dies per wafer.

In its presentation, WD listed a single wafer capacity of 100 TB, which is an increase from around 70 TB per wafer in 2020. Although it's not something we can verify, WD claims to have the world's best charge trap cell, which the company claims leads to higher performance compared to its competitors. The slide provided by WD claims a 20 MB/s lead of the competition at 60 MB/s vs. 40 MB/s. Although Western Digital and Kioxia claim to have to invest less to increase their capacity, it would appear that they're behind the competition when it comes to the amount of layers they can stack. The two are only planning what they call BiCS+ at over 200-layers for 2024, which is well over a year behind Micron. The roadmap stretches all the way to 2032, when we should apparently be seeing 500-layer NAND flash, assuming everything goes according to plan. The first BiCS+ NAND will be for datacenter products and WD claims that their first product should see a 60 percent increase in transfer speeds, a 15 percent increase in program bandwidth and a 55 percent increase in bit growth per wafer over the current BiCS6 NAND.

Today at its What's Next event, Western Digital Corp. announced two new additions to its growing WD_BLACK gaming portfolio, the WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe SSD and WD_BLACK P40 Game Drive SSD. Designed to elevate the gaming experience, the expanded portfolio offers players more options to upgrade their PC or console storage. "AMD is delighted with its continued collaboration with Western Digital to deliver exceptional gaming experiences," said Joe Macri, Compute and Graphics CTO and Corporate Fellow at AMD. "As games become more immersive, the expectation for fast, seamless gameplay increases. AMD strives to remove latency between the system, memory and connected devices like Western Digital's SSD gaming solutions with the adoption of the latest PCIe technologies and memory and latency optimizations within AMD CPUs and GPUs. Our combined solutions enable richer visuals, faster load times and more consistent gameplay."

"We're inspired by the unique ways in which players experience their games and are committed to working with the best technology partners, like AMD, to develop solutions that help them break barriers," said Rob Soderbery, executive vice president and GM, Flash Business Unit, Western Digital. "Our diverse WD_BLACK portfolio ensures that gamers are equipped to conquer today's games and prepared for what's next."