Baldur’s Gate 3, the upcoming RPG from acclaimed developer Larian Studios, recently appeared at the PlayStation State of Play event to the surprise of many fans. The game will launch on PS5 alongside PC this August but players quickly noticed that Xbox Series X/S was mysteriously left out of the release plans. Some feared that the game might have an exclusivity agreement in place for PlayStation but Larian Studios has now explained that this isn’t the case. It’s still planned to release on Xbox but has run into some “technical issues.”
Larian Studios recently provided a statement to Video Games Chronicle and clarified that Baldur’s Gate 3 does not have any exclusivity deals in place. In fact, the studio has been working hard to get the game to run on Xbox Series consoles but it has run into some problems – specifically it can’t get splitscreen co-op to work on both Xbox Series X and S, which is a requirement for the company to ship the game.
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The Larian Studios statement regarding Baldur’s Gate 3‘s exclusivity and Xbox issues reads:
“We’ve had an Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate 3 in development for some time now. We’ve run into some technical issues in developing the Xbox port that have stopped us feeling 100% confident in announcing it until we’re certain we’ve found the right solutions – specifically, we’ve been unable to get splitscreen co-op to work to the same standard on both Xbox Series X and S, which is a requirement for us to ship.”
“There’s no platform exclusivity preventing us from releasing BG3 on Xbox day and date, should that be a technical possibility,” Larian continued. “If and when we do announce further platforms, we want to make sure each version lives up to our standards & expectations.”
Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like Baldur’s Gate 3 will be a PS5 console exclusive but fans also shouldn’t expect an Xbox version to arrive at launch either. It may take some time to fix the co-op issue and get the game to work flawlessly on both Xbox Series X and S.
This isn’t the first time that we’ve heard about developers struggling with the lower Xbox Series S hardware. Last year, a Gotham Knights producer claimed that due to the game’s seamless co-op experience, it simply couldn’t get a stable 60FPS to work on Series S like its more powerful counterpart.
Baldur’s Gate 3 releases on 31 August 2023 for PS5 and PC.
Source: Video Games Chronicle
