Baldur’s Gate III is undoubtedly the summer game, and it isn’t even available on consoles yet. Larian Studios has taken the “it’ll be out when it’s ready” approach to publishing the game across several platforms.
Baldur’s Gate III, which debuted in early access on Windows earlier this month, will be released for PlayStation 5 and macOS on September 6th.
The specific Xbox release date is still unknown, but Larian has stated that the epic RPG will be available on Microsoft’s systems later this year.
The main reason Larian delayed the Xbox release (making Baldur’s Gate III a PlayStation console exclusive for a limited period) was owing to Microsoft’s requirements regarding feature parity between Series S and Series X titles.
The latter is the more powerful of the two consoles, having better quality and framerates, as well as ray-tracing.
“We have no exclusivity deal that prevents us from launching on Xbox,” Michael Douse, director of publishing at Larian Studios, wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter) last month.
“The issue is a technical hurdle. We cannot remove the split-screen feature because we are obliged to launch with feature parity, and so continue to try and make it work.”
Super happy to confirm that after meeting @XboxP3 yesterday, we’ve found a solution that allows us to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox players this year still, something we’ve been working towards for quite some time.
— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) August 24, 2023
Swen Vincke, CEO of Larian and director of Baldur’s Gate III, stated at Gamescom that “we’ve found a solution that allows us to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox players this year still, something we’ve been working towards for quite some time.”
Vincke claimed that Spencer made an exception for Larian in terms of feature parity between the Series S and Series X. Baldur’s Gate III will not support split-screen mode on the less powerful machine, but it will on the Series X. Cross-saving between Steam and the two consoles will also be supported.
Some third-party developers have argued that the Series S is preventing them from delivering cutting-edge gaming experiences.
There has been speculation that companies developing multi-platform games will have to make choices with the Series S, such as not being able to deliver 60 fps per second gameplay on the console.
Now that Larian has won an exception to remove split-screen co-op from Baldur’s Gate III on the Series S, other studios may ask Xbox to allow them to do the same.
