Baldur’s Gate 3 will be released on Xbox this year, despite developer Larian’s f+ears that it would have to be delayed until 2024.
Swev Vincke, the founder and CEO of Larian, announced on Twitter that a solution had been found that would allow the game to be released this year on Xbox Series X and Series S.
Vincke tweeted, “Super happy to confirm that after meeting Phil Spencer yesterday, we’ve found a solution that allows us to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox players this year still.
“All improvements will be present, including split-screen co-op on Series X.” The Xbox Series S will not support split-screen co-op, but it will support cross-save progression between Steam and Xbox Series.”
Larian had difficulties becoming a split-screen co-op to function at a level that it was satisfied with on the less powerful Series S hardware.
A few weeks ago, Larian’s director of publishing Michael Douse tweeted that the game appeared unlikely to come to Xbox this year due to Microsoft’s apparent belief that full feature parity between Xbox Series X and Series X versions was required.
When it came time to launch on Xbox, Douse said, “We have no exclusivity deal that prevents us from doing so.” Technical difficulties are the problem. Since we must launch with feature parity, we are unable to remove the split-screen functionality. We will therefore keep working to make it work.
Douse’s claims, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer said that feature parity isn’t actually necessary and that he “doesn’t see a world” in which the Series S must forgo some games.
All improvements will be there, with split-screen coop on Series X. Series S will not feature split-screen coop, but will also include cross-save progression between Steam and Xbox Series.
— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) August 24, 2023
According to Spencer, who spoke with Larian during a meeting on Wednesday, “We’re taking feedback from devs including Larian. I’m confident we’re going to find a good solution and we’re going to learn. I don’t see a scenario in which we eliminate S.
“I don’t believe you heard us or Larian say that this was about parity in terms of parity. I believe that the community is talking about it more as a result. Even our own games have features that only work on X that do not work on S, such as ray-tracing in some games, which only works on X.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is now anticipated to launch on Xbox Series X and Series S by the end of 2023 after the issue appeared to be resolved by removing the split-screen from the Series S version.
