Head of Larian Studios Swen Vincke said Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox will release in 2023 after all, following development issues on the Series S. Vincke made the announcement on Twitter and said the team reached an agreement with Xbox about releasing a game that didn’t have feature parity between Series X and Series S.
“Super happy to confirm that after meeting [Phil Spencer] yesterday, 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 said on Twitter. “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.”
Super happy to confirm that after meeting @XboxP3 yesterday, 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.
— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) August 24, 2023
So if the BG3 character editor launches before the end of the year, you’ll even get that on Xbox.
Earlier in 2023, Larian issued a statement addressing claims that Baldur’s Gate 3 was a PS5 exclusive and said that problems with split-screen co-op was the primary reason the team had to delay BG3’s launch on Xbox. Xbox’s 2020 guidelines for developing games on Xbox platforms require content parity between games released on consoles in the same generation.
The fourth bullet point under section XR-130 is:
- Ensure that identical game modes are offered across console types within the generation.
In an interview with Video Games Chronicle, Xbox head Phil Spencer said parity was never a problem or even a requirement.
“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,” Spencer said. “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.”
It’s worth noting that features and modes aren’t the same thing, though. Split-screen co-op is an actual game mode that falls under XR-130. Ray tracing is a feature that doesn’t.
Whatever the case, Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox is happening in 2023, though Larian doesn’t have a release date for it yet.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
