Larian says Baldur’s Gate 3 is still on track to hit Xbox this year

videogameschronicle.com:

Larian Studios has confirmed that the Xbox Series X/S version of Baldur’s Gate 3 is still planned for release this year.

Studio founder and CEO Swen Vincke provided an update on the delayed Xbox version in a Twitter update on Tuesday.

“Latest on the Xbox – being actively playtested, still on schedule for this year,” he wrote. “We’ll announce the exact release date when we’re sure it’s done.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 was released for PC in August and PS5 the following month, but the game’s Xbox release was held up as Larian struggled to get split-screen co-op working to the same standard on both Series X and S.

Following a meeting with Microsoft’s head of gaming in August, Vincke announced that the Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate 3 would arrive later this year after split-screen co-op was removed as a feature on Series S.

Larian had previously said on several occasions that it believed Microsoft required full feature parity the between the Series X and Series S versions of the game.

However, Xbox boss Spencer later suggested that feature parity wasn’t actually a requirement, and that he“doesn’t see a world” where ther Series S has to miss out on certain games.

Spencer told Eurogamer: “We’re taking feedback from devs including Larian, I met with them today to talk about it and I’m confident we’re going to find a good solution and we’re going to learn. I don’t see a world where we drop S.

“In terms of parity, I don’t think you’ve heard from us or Larian, that this was about parity. I think that’s more that the community is talking about it. There are features that ship on X today that do not ship on S, even from our own games, like ray-tracing that works on X, it’s not on S in certain games.”