After seeing incredible runaway success on PC, Baldur’s Gate 3’s next stop is slated be in the console space. While a PlayStation 5 version has been confirmed for some time, and was originally incoming alongside the PC version, the Xbox version has been going through some troubles. There is some good news though, as a 2023 launch has just been confirmed for the Microsoft console platforms.
Larian Studios founder and CEO Swev Vincke tweeted today that the Xbox Series X|S version of the widely well-received RPG is now confirmed to be releasing this year. This comes after a meeting with head of Xbox Phil Spencer, probably at Gamescom.
“Super happy to confirm that after meeting [Phil Spencer] yesterday,” said Vincke in a tweet. “We’ve found a solution that allows us to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox players this year still, something we’ve been working towards for quite some time.”
Super happy to confirm that after meeting @XboxP3 yesterday, we’ve found a solution that allows us to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox players this year still, something we’ve been working towards for quite some time.
— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) August 24, 2023
However, there has been a compromise. The Xbox Series S version will ship without the game’s split-screen cooperative play feature, while the Series X will still have it. While we have seen visual effects differences between the X and S version of the Xbox consoles, this may be the first time that a game will ship with a gameplay feature missing on one of them.
“All improvements will be there, with split-screen coop on Series X,” Vincke added in a follow up tweet. “Series S will not feature split-screen coop, but will also include cross-save progression between Steam and Xbox Series.”
Back in February, Larian confirmed that the Xbox version is behind in development due to having issues with split-screen co-op. Later, it revealed that getting the feature running on the Series S was proving difficult, with Xbox engineers even lending support for reaching parity between the platforms. With this, we will have to see if this difference in features will become a more common factor with future releases on Xbox consoles.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was originally supposed to release on PC (out of early access) and PlayStation 5 platforms simultaneously in late August. However, a last minute change pulled forward the PC launch to August 3 while pushing back the PlayStation 5 version to September 6.