This has been speculated for a while that it looked like the Xbox Series X/S expansion storage could have been a variant on CFexpress cards.
You can see in the image above how similar the shape of the card is and also how the layout and pins and number of pins appear to be shared between the 2 devices.
Jez Corden last night confirmed this is the case.
Now presumably Xbox's requirement to have a removable and portable storage media that is fast enough for next gen titles took them down the route of looking at CFexpress.
If you aren't familiar with Compact Flash, it is a long-standing storage format, most typically used by DSLR cameras, more recently it was phased out by SD cards in many instances, but as we rapidly approach the limit of speed within SD cards and the need for faster portable camera storage increases, due to 4K /8K/HDR video bandwidth, CFexpress has stepped in to offer a solution.
CFe cards would however be both prohibitively expensive - they are designed to be very small and to not generate as much heat.
This combination of factors means that even a card that falls short of what the Xbox Series S/X requires is currently significantly more expensive than it's physically larger cousins,
cvp.com
1TB at 1700MBps is £922 here ($1203)
So it looks as if Microsoft has taken the basic CFexpress interface, encased it in a larger heatsink/shroud (which is thermally connected to the inside of the machine) which has opened the doors to faster/cheaper/larger NVME chips vs the type more commonly used within the CFexpress cards.
So what does this mean?
Hopefully, this should mean that due to the standard nature of the interface, adapters to use other types of storage can easily be produced by 3rd parties. (recently confirmed to be coming in the future)
It even means that you may be able to if you are so inclined. Use a homemade or purchased adapter to attach an M2 drive to your Xbox. Although this solution isn't significantly cheaper than the official devices, this should calm the thoughts of those concerned that this propriety device might mean that costs over time would be artificially inflated.
Like the PS5 however, a custom solution is going to need to be benchmarked for sustained and throttled speed to ensure it matches what the games are designed to use. However even you didn't choose to go this route for your next gen titles, this does open the door to a faster than USB 3.1 storage to be used, even for your BC "cold" storage.
You can see in the image above how similar the shape of the card is and also how the layout and pins and number of pins appear to be shared between the 2 devices.
Jez Corden last night confirmed this is the case.
Now presumably Xbox's requirement to have a removable and portable storage media that is fast enough for next gen titles took them down the route of looking at CFexpress.
If you aren't familiar with Compact Flash, it is a long-standing storage format, most typically used by DSLR cameras, more recently it was phased out by SD cards in many instances, but as we rapidly approach the limit of speed within SD cards and the need for faster portable camera storage increases, due to 4K /8K/HDR video bandwidth, CFexpress has stepped in to offer a solution.
CFe cards would however be both prohibitively expensive - they are designed to be very small and to not generate as much heat.
This combination of factors means that even a card that falls short of what the Xbox Series S/X requires is currently significantly more expensive than it's physically larger cousins,
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cvp.com
1TB at 1700MBps is £922 here ($1203)
So it looks as if Microsoft has taken the basic CFexpress interface, encased it in a larger heatsink/shroud (which is thermally connected to the inside of the machine) which has opened the doors to faster/cheaper/larger NVME chips vs the type more commonly used within the CFexpress cards.
So what does this mean?
Hopefully, this should mean that due to the standard nature of the interface, adapters to use other types of storage can easily be produced by 3rd parties. (recently confirmed to be coming in the future)
It even means that you may be able to if you are so inclined. Use a homemade or purchased adapter to attach an M2 drive to your Xbox. Although this solution isn't significantly cheaper than the official devices, this should calm the thoughts of those concerned that this propriety device might mean that costs over time would be artificially inflated.
Like the PS5 however, a custom solution is going to need to be benchmarked for sustained and throttled speed to ensure it matches what the games are designed to use. However even you didn't choose to go this route for your next gen titles, this does open the door to a faster than USB 3.1 storage to be used, even for your BC "cold" storage.
