Baldur's Gate III is coming to Xbox this year after a Series S compromise

engadget.com:

Baldur's Gate III is arguably the game of the summer, and it isn't even out on consoles yet. Developer Larian Studios has taken a "it'll be out when it's ready" approach to releasing the game on various platforms. After becoming an instant hit on Windows when it came out of early access earlier this month, Baldur's Gate III will land on PlayStation 5 and macOS on September 6th. The exact Xbox release date is still unclear, but Larian has finally confirmed the massive RPG will come to Microsoft's consoles later this year.

The main reason that Larian delayed the Xbox release (and thus making Baldur's Gate III a PlayStation console exclusive for a limited time) was due to Microsoft's rules about games having feature parity on Series S and Series X. The latter is the more powerful of the two consoles and tends to deliver visuals with higher fidelity 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.”

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.

Larian CEO and Baldur's Gate III director Swen Vincke said that after meeting Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer at Gamescom, "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 implied that Spencer granted