Larian Studios is set to make a big announcement for Baldur’s Gate 3 later this week.
Larian shared this statement in a tweet where they also announced their nominations in this year’s The Game Awards:
“Xbox fans, and fans of physical media, watch this space for a formal announcement. It’s going to be a busy week.”
Word had spread around earlier this month that Larian Studios was targeting a December 6 release for Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox Series X|S.
It does seem that Larian is nearing the end of development for Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox Series X|S, as Larian head Swen Vincke revealed in a tweet last week that the studio had finally figured out the technical issues they ran into on development for the Xbox Series S. Incredibly enough, Swen also said that they would be able to take what they learned there to make the other versions of the game better.
There seemed to have been real uncertainty on how soon Larian could figure out this issue, because they had not been able to commit to anything until now. Larian did got assistance from Microsoft to speed up development on the title, and Phil Spencer went out of his way to claim that they had secured the Xbox Series X|S release for this year.
At the time, it sounded like Microsoft had softened on their stance on their parity requirement between the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. However, it’s now become clear that Larian and Baldur’s Gate 3 did not get an exception. Instead, Microsoft sent their own Xbox technical team members to intervene directly.
If Larian can secure that release before the end of the year, then Microsoft will have successfully defended their parity requirement. Maybe they will offer similar aid to other developers in the future by default so that they can secure that parity as well. Of course, that will depend on the individual games.
The physical release announcement is also quite interesting. Whether that release is exclusive or is coming first to Xbox, one question arises: Has Larian caught up on all the issues with Chapter 3?
While the game has received near universal acclaim, many of the reviewers based their reviews on Chapters 1 and 2. While this was a prodigious amount of content to go through, the players who actually did get through to Chapter 3 were shocked to find out that Larian still had a lot of bugs and issues to go through on the tail end of the game.
Some people may question if Larian’s title really deserves that much positive critical reception. Nonetheless, the pro-consumer thing to do is to make sure all these issues are ironed out before they even talk about a physical release.
Hopefully, Larian proves that they are the better party in this regard.
