Baldur’s Gate III to Launch on Xbox After Series S Agreement

Baldur’s Gate III, which has been hailed as the summer’s standout game, has yet to be released on consoles. Larian Studios, the developer, has adopted a patient approach, prioritizing the game’s readiness before launching it on different platforms. Following its successful debut on Windows after leaving early access, Baldur’s Gate III will be available on PlayStation 5 and macOS starting September 6th. Although the specific release date for Xbox remains uncertain, Larian has now officially announced that the expansive RPG will arrive on Microsoft’s consoles later in the year.

The main reason why Larian delayed the Xbox release (and made Baldur’s Gate III a PlayStation console for a limited time) was due to Microsoft’s rules regarding game feature parity between the Series S and Series X series. The latter is the most effective. two consoles and generally offers higher resolution and frame rate as well as ray tracing.

“We don’t have an exclusivity agreement that prevents us from releasing Xbox,” Michael Douse, director of publishing at Larian Studios, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) last month. “The problem is a technical hurdle. We can’t remove the split screen feature because we have to launch with feature parity, so we’re still trying to get it working.”

Larian CEO and Baldur’s Gate III director Swen Vincke said that after meeting with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer at Gamescom, “we found a solution that will allow us to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox players again this year, something we’ve been working toward for some time.” Vincke hinted that Spencer granted Larian an exception to feature parity between Series S and Series X. On a less powerful system, Baldur’s Gate III does not have a split-screen mode, but the Series X supports this feature. Cross-save progress between Steam and two consoles is also supported.

Some third-party developers have claimed that the S series is holding them back from delivering top-notch gaming experiences. It has been suggested that studios making cross-platform games have to make compromises with the Series S, such as not being able to offer 60 frames per second gameplay on a console. Now that Larian has gotten an exception to drop split-screen co-op from Baldur’s Gate III for the Series S only, other studios may be pressuring Xbox to drop some features from that console as well.