Microsoft: Xbox One S will not support 4K pass-through, will look into it for the future

At E3 2016 this year, Microsoft confirmed 2 new successors to the original Xbox One, namely Project Scorpio and Xbox One S. The Xbox One S will be the immediate successor, plugging the gap whilst the company works on its next-generation of console, known only as Project Scorpio. The improved Xbox One brings a smaller overall body, an internal power supply, IR blaster and 4K video output.

On top of all these improvements, we also reported that the Xbox One S will upscale games to 4K, however, it won’t support native 4K gaming. That role is left to Project Scorpio, arriving in 2017.

Last week, reports began to surface from several different media outlets that claimed the Xbox One S would not support 4K pass-through. 4K pass-through allows a connected device, such as Amazon Fire TV stick, to push 4K content through the console and display it in native 4K on the display. These reports were unconfirmed and unverified, until now.

Today, Microsoft reached out to us with a statement that confirms the Xbox One S does not support 4K pass-through for the time being, however, they aren’t ruling out adding support for it in the future:

Xbox One S does not currently support 4K pass-through via HDMI-in. We will continue to explore making the changes needed for the hardware to support pass-through as 4K broadcasts become more widespread.

Through the statement given by the spokeswoman, we can see that Microsoft is not completely ruling out adding 4K pass-through to the Xbox One S, however, it believes that the content available for the technology is not widespread enough to warrant implementing it just yet, although, they do state that they’re exploring options for the future, for if or when the technology is more widespread.

What do you think of the lack of 4K pass-through support? Let us know in the comments!

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