Larian Studios will officially release its Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 – which has been playable in Early Access since 2020 – on August 31st on macOS, PlayStation 5 and Windows PC. But a version of Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t on the table for Xbox, says the developer, and it’s not for platform exclusivity reasons.
Baldur’s Gate 3The summer release of was unveiled during Sony’s State of Play showcase on Thursday. A new trailer for the RPG introduced Baldur’s Gate fans to General Ketheric Thorm, a “seemingly invincible necromancer who leads an army of the dead” who – bonus! – happens to be voiced by the beloved and intimidating JK Simmons.
This trailer also highlighted two new features for Baldur’s Gate 3: Split-screen co-op play, allowing two players on one PlayStation 5 (or up to four with online co-op); and controller support. The first feature, Larian says, is partly why there’s no Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate 3… still. After Larian Creative Director Swen Vincke took to Twitter to reassure fans that the studio is not “playing the exclusivity game” with Xbox fans The studio went to Reddit for an extended explanation of what’s going on.
Xbox players, we’ve seen your questions about if/when to expect this Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox. We had an Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate 3 has been in the works for a while, but we ran into some technical issues – particularly with split-screen co-op. We are still working on an Xbox version of BG3, but we’re not confident enough to announce it just yet. We don’t like to announce anything until we’re ready because we don’t want to give people hope until we’re sure we can deliver.
There is no platform exclusivity preventing us from releasing anything BG3 on Xbox tag and date, should that be technically possible. As we announce additional platforms, we want to ensure that each release meets our standards and expectations.
So don’t give up hope, Xbox fans. If Larian can make it work on Xbox Series X (and Xbox Series S, too), you might find yourself facing off against Necro JK Simmons by the end of the year.
