That update (pre-Ares) was talked about and promised for months since AX8's 10 FW had things (new Friedman amp, maybe? I can't recall correctly) that the last Quantum for the II (with SOME of the ARES epiphanies) didn't. Then, Cliff announced the porting of ARES to the II platform as an EOL gift to the community. Many months later, here we are, ARES rev 1.02 is the LAST FW for the II (maybe some bug fixes later on) and not a single word has been said about the future of the AX8 platform.
Even thought they share the same platform, we all know the technical limitations of the hardware in AX8 vs the Axe Fx II, althought it was said that the greatest limitation in the II for the ARES port was not in it's hardware capabilities but in the dedicated memory for the code, we don't know if this is the same between AX8 and the II, maybe the AX8 has more space being a newer product, only FAS knows.
Finally, as I said in another post, let's remember that Joe Rogers is no longer working at FAS and he was the man responsible for porting the code from the II to the AX8 so is expected for things to get really slow at this side. Maybe with the II now finished we can catch up at some point, but unless
@FractalAudio says something, all of this falls into pure speculation.
EDIT: User J.J. noted this thread from
Oct 15, 2016 It seems that the AX8 has more memory (at least) than the Axe FX II MK 1/2, dunno if this applies to XL/XL+...