Baldur's Gate III might not release on Xbox platforms until 2024. That's according to Michael Douse, Director of Publishing at Larian Studios, who tweeted out some issues on the platform, adding that the lack of a release date isn't due to some exclusivity deal. BG3's PC version is coming August 3, followed by a PS5 version on September 6, though there haven't been any updates for the Xbox Series S/X release. He attributes technical limitations to the lower-end Xbox Series S consoles, on which the studio is having trouble getting split-screen co-op working properly.
“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,” Douse said in a follow-up tweet, addressing why Larian can't just discard the functionality on the Xbox Series S. Microsoft's lower-end console has been at the centre of debate lately, with some claiming that it's limiting next-gen gaming with 30fps — albeit that's the trade-off you make when you get a lower-cost system. However, in Baldur's Gate 3's case, the console seems to be compromising its release on the entire current-gen Xbox ecosystem — both Series S and Series X — by delaying its release until the team gets past the challenge of including the split-screen co-op feature.
We have quite a few engineers working very hard to do what no other RPG of this scale has achieved: seamless drop-in, drop-out co-op on Series S. We hope to have an update by the end of the year.
While fans are going to be impatient that owners of a PC or PS5 will get to play Baldur's Gate 3 much earlier than them, Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke confirmed in an interview that parity of features between both Xbox
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