Ahead of Baldur’s Gate 3’s long-awaited 1.0 launch not long from now, developer Larian Studios has been revealing plenty of new details on the RPG. In addition to amending its launch plans, the developer has introduced a new class, detailed the level cap, and discussed the scope of the game’s script, among other things. Alongside that, the developer has also offered more detail on what’s going on with the Xbox Series X/S version.
Earlier this year, when Baldur’s Gate 3 was announced for the PS5, Larian Studios assured that the game was not a console exclusive, and that the only reason the Xbox Series X/S version hadn’t been officially announced or dated was due to the developer facing technical difficulties on the platform. With that in mind though, does the studio have a rough idea of when the Xbox version will be read to release?
In a recent interview with IGN, speaking about Baldur’s Gate 3’s Xbox release, creative director and Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke said that the development team is hoping to get the game ready and out for Xbox Series X/S sometime this year.
“Our ambition is definitely to get it ready for this year,” he said. “Our teams have been working on this for quite some time, and they’re pissed off themselves that they didn’t manage to do it. I hope people understand, it’s the reality of development. It exists. It’s not necessarily what you want, but it exists.
“We want this game finished. It’s ready. It needs to get out there. We want players to play it. We want as many players as possible to play it. So it’s in our own best interest to bring it out on all platforms. We are doing everything we can, but we don’t want to compromise as we’re doing that. We want to make sure that when you get it in your hands you say hey, this is really good, I want to play this with my buddies in multiplayer.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Vincke explained that if Larian had stuck to its original intention of a simultaneous launch for Baldur’s Gate 3 with full parity across all platforms, its release would have had to be delayed again.
“If we were to do ultimate parity on all the platforms, we would have to wait I don’t know how much time before we would be ready,” he said. “That’s why it’s important we release it now [on PC], we release it when it’s ready on PS5, and we release it when it’s ready on Xbox.
“This one’s not exclusive. You’re going to be able to play it. It’s just a matter of patience. This is really a question of time.”
During the same interview, Swincke offered further explanations on the technical difficulties Larian has been facing with Baldur’s Gate 3’s Xbox release, stating that getting the game’s scplitscreen functionalities properly optimized for the Xbox Series S’ weaker hardware in particular has been a roadblock, though Larian is continuing to work on sorting through the issues, with Microsoft also providing support for the same.
Baldur’s Gate 3 launches for PC on August 3, and for PS5 on September 6.
