As part of a Minecraft Preview Build For Xbox Series consoles, players noticed the option to enable ray-tracing. As seen on PC, ray-tracing in Minecraft presents the game with full path-traced lighting - and the results are stunning. And completely transform the visual side of the experience in ways that make the block-heavy title cutting edge.

So much so you needed a high-end GeForce RTX graphics card with DLSS to turn on the feature - which led to it being called Minecraft RTX.

In response to the unexpected addition the official Minecraft account posted that the new build "inadvertently included prototype code for raytracing support on Xbox consoles".

The previous Minecraft Preview build available to Xbox Insiders inadvertently included prototype code for raytracing support on Xbox consoles. This early prototype code has been removed from Preview and doesn't signal near future plans to bring raytracing support to consoles.

— Minecraft (@Minecraft) March 31, 2022

Adding that is "doesn't signal near future plans to bring raytracing support to consoles", which is a shame. But still, with the option being there it does kind of signal that the team is playing with the idea of Minecraft ray-tracing on consoles.