Baldur’s Gate 3is officiallySteam DeckVerified just days after launch, reachingValve’s quality standards on the platform. However, this has only served to confuse and frustrateXboxowners even further, as they continue to wait for news on their port.
This comes afterLarian Studiosexpressed confidence in how thefinal build of the game runs on Steam Deck, with players also asserting that previous performance issues had been addressed. But because the Deck is primarily a handheld console, Xbox fans are wondering why they have to wait so much longer for this port, leaving those on PC, PlayStation 5, and Steam Deck to have all the fun.
Related:I’m Nervous About Starting Baldur’s Gate 3
Larian announced the Steam Deck update on Twitter. While this came as a relief to those who primarily play on the Deck, Xbox fans immediately made their feelings known.
Of course, we’re in the console wars, so the haters are also out in full force. Many of them are showing off their Steam Deck playing the game just fine, bragging to Xbox fans whomay have to wait until next yearto play the RPG themselves.
Admittedly, there’s a flaw in the hater logic here. Playing on Steam Deck disables local co-op, which is the feature holding the Xbox version back from release. As we’ve known for some time, there’s just too much of a gap in quality between Series X and S when playing with split screen, and Microsoft won’t allow Larian to cut the feature from one version and not the other.
With some tweaks, Steam Deck can get local multiplayer working, but even players on this platform admit that it’s been draining their battery after an hour. This isn’t too surprising, since Larian doesn’t intend to support the feature on Deck.
On the whole, Steam Deck seems to sit at around 40FPS even on lower graphics settings. Conversely, many Series S releases allow players to choose between higher-quality graphics or 60FPS. This isn’t a requirement though, so we’ll have to wait and see how the game plays on Xbox consoles, even if we can safely assume that Series X owners will be fine.
