Baldur’s Gate 3will nowrelease earlier than expected on PC, but has been slightly delayed on PS5to ensure it releases with 60fps support. Larian, the studio behind BG3, alsoconfirmed in Februarythat there will be an Xbox port of the game, but have now said that it does not have a release date for the Xbox port due to an ongoing issue with two-player split-screen co-op on the Xbox Series S, saying “we need to ensure that the game is performing without compromise across the entire Xbox X|S ecosystem”.
Apparently, the issues with the Xbox Series S port is delaying an Xbox port for the foreseeable future, as opposed to timed console exclusivity. Microsoft enforces gameplay feature parity across both the Xbox Series X and S, a policy presumably intended to ensure that Series S owners don’t feel as if they are receiving inferior versions of games because of their cheaper, less powerful console. They are, of course, getting optimised versions of games that often have lower frame rates and lower graphical resolutions, but in Microsoft’s eyes, they should otherwise be playing the same game.
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It’s a fair policy to ensure that your customer base all have the same key gameplay features. But of course, this means that release on Xbox Series X will be delayed until Larian can figure out the Xbox Series S port, because Microsoft is equally hesitant to scrap the split-screen co-op mode on Xbox altogether. It wants multiplatform games to launch on Xbox with the same gameplay features as PlayStation, which makes sense too – otherwise, it would be giving PlayStation an advantage. If you think about it for more than a second though, Microsoft is already harming its consumers. Because of its policy of ensuring gameplay parity between its own consoles and other platforms, it’s doomed itself to a release date likely much later than that of PlayStation’s, and definitely much later than that on PC. It might not even come out till next year,according to IGN’s reporting.
This also looks bad for Larian because it makes it look like the company cares less about Xbox players than PlayStation, despite the fact that it had intended for a simultaneous release. The simple fact is that the Xbox Series S is far less powerful than the Xbox Series X and the PS5, with a fraction of the processing power, a maximum of 1440p resolution, and less RAM. Technically, the Xbox One X has more raw graphical processing power than the newer Series S, though the S outperforms it more generally. It’s no wonder that games made for new-gen consoles are struggling to perform on Xbox’s budget option, especially gamesas big and complex as Baldur’s Gate 3. It reflects poorly on Microsoft that Larian has to compromise on its Xbox port to get the game optimised, but its own policies have it backed into a corner: in order to support a less powerful console intended to corner a lower-budget market, the rest of its player base gets shafted.
To its credit, Microsoft seems to be giving Larian lots of support in developing the port. But withgames only getting bigger, this is likely to happen again in the future. This poses an important question: will Microsoft eventually have to compromise Series S games? Will it choose to remove certain gameplay elements or even skip the less powerful console altogether? I don’t think it’s feasible, considering the uproar that would certainly follow. Considering the Series S has been marketed as having all the same games as the Series X, to pull the rug out from under them now would be unethical. But as a whole, Xbox players will suffer if more multiplatform games get delayed because of the less powerful console. In fact, games might start moving towards Sony’s open arms if they predict they’ll have a problem porting their games to the Series S. That might be the worst possible outcome for Microsoft, considering it’salready beefing with PlayStation over console exclusives. We can only wait and see how Microsoft works its way out of this position, if it even can.
