When Larian Studios first announced the delay of Baldur’s Gate 3 for Xbox Series X|S, a narrative had formed online among fans that the Xbox Series S was holding back game development. That narrative may have finally been debunked today.
This narrative around the Xbox Series S revolved around the idea that game developers are being held back in making modern games by having to adjust to the Xbox Series S. In the Xbox Series family, the Xbox Series S has less powerful hardware, is digital only, and is cheaper. But Microsoft has sold the console on the promise that modern games will run on both Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.
Furthermore, Microsoft has been selling the consoles with the promise of parity. Theoretically, the only difference should be in terms of performance, and how studios have to adjust their games for it accordingly.
This narrative formed around Baldur’s Gate 3 because Larian had stated that they needed to fix how split-screen co-op worked for the game on the Xbox Series S. A similar narrative had emerged previously around Gotham Knights, though there is no clear difference in quality and performance for the game between the Xbox Series S and other platforms.
That narrative seems set to change, as reported by PC Gamer. Larian head Swen Vincke had shared an update on Twitter, that the studio was finally able to work around the RAM and VRAM loads of the Xbox Series S.
Vincke then said that Larian would be able to take what they accomplished on the Xbox Series S, and use it to improve performance for Baldur’s Gate 3 across all platforms. It’s great news, especially since that improvement is actually needed.
While many fans were eager to get into console wars over the narrative, PlayStation 5 owners who actually bought Baldur’s Gate 3 found out that their console may have been able to run split-screen co-op for the game, but it was actually a compromised experience for them too.
Larian Studios put all this effort into the game after Microsoft assigned their own engineers to help Larian in sorting out these performance issues. Microsoft committed that Baldur’s Gate 3 would be releasing on the Xbox Series consoles before the end of 2023.
With everything that we know now, it seems reasonable to believe that Microsoft and Larian Studios will be able to meet this goal, though they don’t seem to be done yet and it may take until December.
