Monday morning Microsoft revealed a ton of new details about the Xbox Series X. The information drop focused on hardware analysis and specific new technologies. One of the new announcements focused on expanding on the Xbox Series X's drive space. The Xbox Series X features an impressive 1TB SSD, but even that might fill up quickly with next-gen games. Microsoft plans to offer options for expansion in the form of proprietary SSD cartridges. If that sounds a lot like a memory card, it's because it kind of is.
The Xbox Series X proprietary NVMe SSD cartridges are exactly that. They're small cards that can be plugged into the back of the console to add more space. They look a lot like memory cards from the PlayStation 2-era of consoles, though a little sleeker. And, sadly, they're the only way to add extra space from which Xbox Series X owners can run games. Unlike with recent consoles, players can't buy any old hard drive or SSD online and plug it in.
Microsoft does seem to have a good reason for using proprietary cards with the Xbox Series X, though. The Xbox Series X is a very powerful console. So powerful that it's going to dwarf a lot of gaming PCs, even. This means that a lot of PC SSDs are, sadly, going to have worse performance than the Xbox Series X is equipped with. In order to maintain that caliber of performance, Microsoft has to require a minimum standard for SSD expansion. The simplest way to do that is to offer proprietary SSDs.
Plugging in one of the Xbox Series X's proprietary SSD cartridges would maintain the speeds of the internal drive with no disruption. Given that the Xbox Series X's SSD is a core feature of the console, guaranteeing fast loading times.
The Xbox Series X isn't limited to just the proprietary SSD cards, however. It will also allow for standard USB storage devices to be plugged in. These USB drives simply can't be used for anything other than storage. No game installations, specifically. As such, Xbox Series X owners can still offload game data onto a USB storage device when the game isn't bein played regularly. Then the data can be transferred back from the USB when the Xbox Series X owner wants to play the game again. It's a more annoying process, but it does offer users the opportunity to avoid purchasing spendy proprietary cartridges.
Microsoft has not provided pricing information regarding these Xbox Series X SSD cartridges yet, but they can be assumed to be expensive. Stay tuned for more information in the coming months.
The Xbox Series X console is planned for release in late 2020.
Source: Digital Foundry