Only the other day, we were very excited to learn that Microsoft and Mojang had finally added aray tracing support to Minecraft Preview on Xbox Series X/S. However, it seems that was an error and has now been removed.

For a handful of Xbox Insiders, the ray tracing option was active for a brief period - it remained greyed-out in the settings for the majority.  Now that's the case for everyone again, with no current plans to bring it back.

A tweet from the official Minecraft Twitter account claimed that "prototype code for ray tracing support" was accidentally added. It added that it did not signal any intent to bring the feature to consoles in the "near future".

Xbox Insiders have been able to access Minecraft Preview on Xbox consoles since February (it was already available on iOS and Windows). It effectively replaces the beta test program (although currently runs alongside it) and enables new trial features and settings to play with.

As well as ray tracing support, the "inadvertent" release upped the Xbox version to be optimised for Xbox Series X/S for some. It seems this has been recitified too.

Of course, that doesn't mean it'll never reappear. Just not anytime soon.