As you might recall from all the early leaks of the Xbox Series X, there was a strange slot on the back of it that people couldn't quite figure out. There were speculations of it being used for diagnostics as well as peripherals - but today Microsoft has revealed the answer - it's a slot for an Xbox Series X Storage Expansion Card. Basically a memory card á medieval (well... almost) times.
Here's how this is described:
"Built in partnership with Seagate, this 1 TB custom storage solution expands storage capacity of Xbox Series X with the full speed and performance of the Xbox Velocity Architecture Previous generation Xbox titles can still be played directly from external USB 3.2 hard drives. However, to receive all the benefits of the Xbox Velocity Architecture and optimal performance, Xbox Series X, optimized games should be played from the internal SSD or Xbox Series X Storage Expansion Card."
We assume there will be bigger memory cards than 1 TB released eventually, but hopefully, this will be a lightning-fast and easy way of expanding the console's storage. And as you can see, it will also be possible to hook up external hard drives, although you won't be able to use Xbox Velocity Architecture this way, which is a feature explained in the bottom of this news piece.
This image comes from Twitter, where John Linneman from Digital Foundry shows the Xbox Series X Storage Expansion Card. Have you missed memory cards?
"Xbox Velocity Architecture - The Xbox Velocity Architecture is the new architecture we've created for the Xbox Series X to unlock new capabilities never-before seen in console development. It consists of four components: our custom NVMe SSD, a dedicated hardware decompression block, the all new DirectStorage API, and Sampler Feedback Streaming (SFS). This combination of custom hardware and deep software integration allows developers to radically improve asset streaming and effectively multiply available memory. It will enable richer and more dynamic living worlds unlike anything ever seen before. It also effectively eliminates loading times, and makes fast travel systems just that: fast."