While PC players can look forward to an early release of Baldur’s Gate III and PS5 players are also in September, Xbox players are still looking into the tube. Larian boss Swen Vincke has now commented on the reasons.
RPG fans were already irritated when Larian Studios only officially announced the PS5 version of Baldur’s Gate III. There are now specific dates for PC and PS5, with PC players even look ing forward to the release from August 31st to August 3rd. Only in terms of Xbox, things still look bleak.
The good news: the Xbox version is still a work in progress. The bad news: it could stay that way for a while. Larian is still struggling with technical problems and the restrictions imposed by Microsoft’s guidelines. The same state that games for Xbox Series X and S must have the same range of features so that owners of the weaker Series S are not disadvantaged.
And that’s where the rub lies, because Larian Studios can’t seem to get the split-screen co-op to work on the Series S, while it runs absolutely fine on the Series X. Due to Microsoft’s guidelines, the only alternative, if it doesn’t work at all, would be to completely trash the split-screen co-op of the Xbox versions. However, the Xbox version would have fewer features than the PS5 version.
Swen Vincke told IGN: “You’re very free in what you do, freer than people expect. That means you can come across a really big city that’s a lot denser than people expect. Man can do all kinds of weird things and that requires a lot of optimization. We’re just faster on certain platforms than on other platforms. It just takes time for us. That’s the reality of development.
Vincke also emphasizes that Larian Studios has received a lot of help from Microsoft to fix the problems, but doesn’t rule out that there could be unspecified compromises with the Xbox version. “Everyone wants it to come out on Xbox. It’s not that we don’t want it to come out on Xbox. It’s just that our problem – and that’s us, Larian – is that we’re having a played a very big game. And it’s a very complicated game,” said Vincke.
After 20 years, Larian Studios is also returning to the city of Baldur’s Gate – with a complete next-gen reimagining.
