Microsoft: Enabling ray tracing on Xbox Minecraft beta went by accident

Microsoft and Mojang have no plans to add ray tracing to the Xbox Series version of Minecraft for now. Recently, that feature was enabled in the beta version of the game, but according to the companies, it happened by accident.

Microsoft and Mojang confirm on Twitter that the most recent build of Minecraft Preview inadvertently included early code for ray tracing support on Xbox consoles. This early prototype code has been removed from preview and does not indicate any plans to bring raytracing to consoles in the near future. The ray-traced build was available to players enrolled in the Xbox Insiders program, the company said.

Microsoft Demonstrated Minecraft Ray Tracing on Xbox Series X in 2020 already, but has since said nothing about the feature. Earlier this week, however, a new build of the Minecraft Preview version for Xbox Series X and S appeared, which enabled ray tracing in the game. Users were able to enable the option by loading a PC multiplayer world with ray tracing, or by creating a new game world and enabling ray tracing in the settings. This now appears to have been an error.

So for now, the feature is not coming to Minecraft for the current-gen consoles. Microsoft specifically writes that the company has no “near future” plans to enable this feature on consoles, so the option may follow at a later date. For now, Minecraft with ray tracing is only available for PCs, in the form of Minecraft RTX.

Microsoft already demonstrated Minecraft with ray tracing in 2020 on the Xbox Series X. Source: Microsoft