We've heard about some form of 'next-gen' version of Minecraft since before Xbox Series X and S actually launched, yet nothing of the sort has materialised almost three years into the platform's life cycle. However, a new classification from the German ratings board is leading to speculation that a new edition of Minecraft is coming very soon.
As spotted by Andrew Marmo on Twitter, The USK has rated an "Xbox Series" version of the game this month. There's no definitive release date attached to the rating, but these sorts of classifications usually happen pretty close to the release of a new title - so we're hoping this points towards that next-gen Minecraft port actually happening soon.
We say we're still 'hoping' because this thing has supposedly been coming for so long we've almost given up on it being real. The hype around Minecraft getting proper ray tracing was legit back in 2019/2020, but let's see if that promise actually comes to fruition in the coming weeks/months.
Back in March 2022, Mojang actually added a preview ray tracing feature to Minecraft on Xbox consoles, but later admitted it was a mistake and removed the RT option. We're not sure what other enhancements are planned for a current-gen Minecraft port, but clearly, ray tracing in some form has still been worked on in recent years.
In any case, this new German rating feels as close as we've gotten to this thing actually launching, so, here's hoping we see a native Xbox Series X|S of Minecraft sooner rather than later!