Why Baldur’s Gate III is an accidental PS5 console exclusive

engadget.com:

Baldur’s Gate III is available right now — partially. To be clear, the game itself is complete, but its rollout is fragmented, with different release dates for each of its planned platforms. Following a lengthy Early Access period, the PC and Mac version of Baldur’s Gate III went live today, August 3, while the PlayStation 5 version is due out on September 6. The game’s developer, Larian Studios, hasn’t provided a release date for the Xbox Series X and S edition.

This isn’t a wholly unprecedented situation. After all, plenty of games come out at different times on various platforms, determined by licensing and exclusivity deals, or simply developer priority. In the case of Baludr’s Gate III, though, something went wrong — specifically with the Xbox version.

“We have no exclusivity deal that prevents us from launching on Xbox,” Larian Studios director of publishing Michael Douse said on X in July. “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.”

Larian is having trouble fitting Baldur’s Gate III on the Xbox Series S, the lower-priced and lower-powered console in Microsoft’s ninth-generation lineup. Microsoft requires all games to run, feature-complete and without changes in quality or mechanics, on both the Xbox Series X and Series S. With Baldur’s Gate III, this parity rule means the game will be console-exclusive to the PS5 for four months, at least.

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