Baldur’s Gate 3 might not arrive on Xbox Series X|S until 2024

Baldur’s Gate may be releasing this week on PC and in September for PlayStation 5, but players on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S may have to wait until next year. This according to the developers themselves, Larian Studios, who have promised to give fans an update on said version “by the end of the year”.

As reported by VGC, Larian Studio’s director of publishing Michael Douse took to Twitter to speak about the problems they’ve faced while working on the game for both of Microsofts current consoles, hinting that they may not be able to reach a solution until 2024. “We have quite a few engineers working very hard to do what no other RPG of this scale has achieved: seamless drop-in, drop-out co-op on Series S,” he said. “We hope to have an update by the end of the year.”

With talks of Bethesda and Activision becoming exclusive after being acquired by Xbox, and Final Fantasy XVI supposedly being tied to PlayStation due to a rumored deal between Square Enix and Sony, one might be pushed to believe that such is the case with Baldur’s Gate 3. However, this is not the case at all, as the developers have been open about the situation for months. The main issue is the split-screen co-op mode of the game, which works on Xbox Series X but not on the less-powerful Series S.

Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox may have to remove co-op

According to creative director of the game Swen Vincke, Microsoft has a policy that requires games to have the exact same gameplay features on both Xbox Series X and Series S, meaning they require developers to have “feature parity” between both versions. Games on Series S present lower graphic fidelity and resolution, but with Baldur’s Gate 3 they’ve not been able to make split-screen work as it’s quite demanding on the processing side.

“You’re very free in what you do, more free than people expect,” said Vinke about the co-op mode. “That means you can run into a really big city that’s much more dense than people expect. You can do all kinds of craziness, so it requires a lot of optimisation. On certain platforms we’re just faster than on other platforms. It just takes us time. That’s the reality of development.”

“You can do all kinds of craziness, so it requires a lot of optimisation. On certain platforms we’re just faster than on other platforms. It just takes us time. That’s the reality of development.” concluded the creative director.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is launching August 3 on PC, with the PlayStation 5 version set for September 6.