Baldur’s Gate 3 It is coming to Xbox Series X/S, but the exact time has not been confirmed yet.
In an interview with IGN, Larian Studios boss Swen Vincke explained that the issue of simultaneous release on all platforms boiled down to issues the team had on Xbox.
Larian’s goal was to release Baldur’s Gate 3 on all three platforms simultaneously, but optimization issues with the Xbox Series S caused delays.
As mentioned, the main issue has to do with split-screen co-op. The Xbox Series S appears to have a split-screen issue, apparently due to memory constraints. Split-screen is a big feature of gaming, and Microsoft is sticking with parity between the Series S and Xbox Series X.
This means you can’t have gaming on one system and not on another, so ditching that feature on the S-series and keeping it on the X-series isn’t an option. Moreover, this is not what Larian wants to do.
“It’s not what we planned [the Xbox delay]”We plan to release at the same time. But we’ve been working on this game for a long time. It’s a really big game. The amount of things you can do in it is crazy. I think when people see it all “They’ll be surprised. We have to overcome some limitations, so we just work on them. Some take more time.
“You have a lot more freedom to do things, more freedom than people think. That means you could end up with a really big city with a much higher population density than people expected. You can do all kinds of crazy things, so it’s A lot of optimization is required. On some platforms we’re just faster than others. It just takes our time. That’s the reality of development.”
Because of this, Layran may need to make concessions on the Xbox version. Such compromises aren’t ideal, Vincke said, and the team is trying to “limit” what has to be compromised, so they’re slowly working on the Xbox version of the game.
To that end, the team is receiving help from the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, which is welcome.
“Of course we’ve got support from Microsoft,” Vincke said, “We’ve got support from the ATG group. Said we didn’t want it to come out on Xbox. It’s just, our problem — and that’s who we are, Larian — is that we just made a really big game. It’s a very complex game.”
“We’re not developers with unlimited resources either. We’re limited in how long we can test each platform version. The more permutations you add to a platform, the more complex things get. I hope I can tell you that we can create magic and miracles, but we can’t.
“But I don’t think we should hide from the world a version that’s ready if we’re there. I don’t think that’s a good reason to stop it.”
Vincke went on to say that if Larian waits until parity is finally achieved across all platforms, the wait for the game will be even longer. That’s why the studio is launching Baldur’s Gate 3 on PC three weeks early, with a PS5 release in September before the Xbox Series X/S version is complete.
As for when it will be ready for the Xbox, it’s only a matter of time, and Lairan hopes it will be available sometime this year, but Vincke can’t guarantee that.
