Although the PS5 hasn’t actually been officially revealed by Sony, we do know a lot thanks to pieces of information we’ve gathered over the last year. In October, Mark Cerny revealed a lot of information in a behind-the-scenes interview with Wired, especially the fact that PS5 will run on modular solid-state drives.
A few months later, patents filed by Sony depicting memory card-style 1TB external storage began popping up around the net. Now, another outlet has gone behind-the-scenes with Microsoft’s Xbox Series X, and they’ve discovered exactly the same concept – old-fashioned memory cards for the console, reborn as external hard drives.
Digital Foundry has posted a YouTube video and a full comprehensive breakdown detailing all the juicy details they found under the hood of the Xbox Series X. Details on the console’s new ray-tracing capabilities were shown off, as were the full power of the Series X’s 12.155 Teraflops of graphical power.
However, one of the biggest surprise is the reveal of Xbox-branded external memory cards. Made in collaboration with hard drive manufacturers Seagate, each external solid-state drive possesses 1TB of data in order to handle the memory inefficiency and enormous quantities of data next-generation games will need in order to play. Check out the cards below:
The memory cards/add-on NVMe drivers are pretty cool. This is what you'll use with that rear slot to expand storage. pic.twitter.com/OmiIsIVh6FMarch 16, 2020
As you can see, they present surprisingly like the old PS1 memory cards, although they’re clearly much smaller, metallic and branded with the Seagate and Xbox logos. It’s revealed they’ll stick into the back of the console, near the HDMI ports.
The Xbox Series X won’t be the only ones taking this approach. Initially thought to be storage for a new PSP, the Sony patent for an old-school memory cartridge is likely to be for the upcoming PS5.
Although the console still hasn’t been revealed, given the PS5 and Xbox Series X are likely to possess similar specs and processing power, it’s unsurprising both companies came to the same conclusion, realising external storage was needed to get the most out of the console.
Check out the full video from Digital Foundry below. Now, we’re just waiting for a big PS5 reveal, which surely can’t be far away. However, with the current global virus crisis causing delays in all sectors, who knows what’s going to happen?
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