Phil Spencer Insists Games Launch Across Xbox Series X and S Despite Baldur's Gate 3 No-Show

ign.com:

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has admitted the fact Steam megahit Baldur’s Gate 3 launches on PlayStation 5 ahead of Xbox Series X and S isn’t a great situation for Microsoft, but remains committed to having games release on both the X and S.

Larian’s sprawling role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 launched on PC in August, and launches on PS5 early September, but the Xbox Series X and S version is without a release date. There is no exclusivity deal between Larian and Sony. Rather, Larian is struggling to get Baldur’s Gate 3’s two-player split-screen co-op running well enough on the less powerful but cheaper Xbox Series S, and a Microsoft policy that enforces gameplay feature parity across Xbox Series X and S means Larian cannot release Baldur’s Gate 3 on any Xbox Series console until it has optimised split-screen co-op on the S to the point it hits the quality bar it needs to satisfy players. As IGN revealed in June, Microsoft has parachuted in engineers to help Larian overcome this problem, but the upshot is Baldur’s Gate 3 may not launch on Xbox until the end of 2023, or even 2024.

Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t the only game to suffer from split-screen issues on Xbox. Microsoft’s own studio, 343, scrapped split-screen from the ill-fated Halo Infinite last year. Turn 10’s Forza Motorsport won’t have split-screen at launch, either.

The situation with Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox Series X and S highlights an intensifying headache for Microsoft. As more and more developers look to make the most of the power of the PS5 and Xbox Series X, will having to release a version of their multiplatform games on the S hold them back? Or, in drastic cases such as Larian’s, hold Xbox versions back completely?

Has the time come, then, for Microsoft to let studios