Microsoft Engineers Helping Get Baldur’s Gate 3 Split-Screen Working on Xbox Series S

Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the most-anticipated role-playing games of 2023. It launches in August on PC, then in September on PlayStation 5. But why is there no release date for the Xbox Series X and S versions? At first glance, you might have thought Sony’s Jim Ryan had bundled developer Larian a basket full of cash to secure Baldur’s Gate 3 console exclusivity, but this is not the case. There is no exclusivity deal going on here. Which begs the question: what’s up with Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox Series consoles?

The truth has to do with Larian’s ongoing struggle to get Baldur’s Gate 3’s two-player split-screen co-op running well enough on the Xbox Series S, and a Microsoft policy that enforces gameplay feature parity across Xbox Series X and S. This means Larian cannot release Baldur’s Gate 3 on any Xbox Series console until it’s optimised split-screen co-op on the S to the point it hits the quality bar it needs to satisfy players. This is not about a framerate difference, a resolution difference, or whether or not the S version has the same advanced graphics effects as the X version. This is about a key gameplay feature difference, and that’s where Microsoft draws the line.

You might have asked, why not just release Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox Series X, ditching the S altogether? Microsoft does not allow this. You might also have asked, why not ditch split-screen co-op on the Xbox Series S version? As mentioned, Microsoft mandates gameplay feature parity across X and S, so this is not allowed either. And you might have asked, why not take the drastic decision to cut split-screen co-op entirely from the Xbox Series version of the game? Baldur’s Gate 3 is a considered by many to be a predominantly single-player game, after all, and let’s not forget Microsoft’s own studio, 343, scrapped splitscreen from the ill-fated Halo Infinite last year. Not only is Microsoft keen for multiplatform games to launch on Xbox with the same gameplay features as those seen on PlayStation, but Larian would face a potential backlash from Xbox players, particularly Xbox Series X players, if Baldur’s Gate 3 launched without split-screen when the console is perfectly capable of supporting it and the PS5 version has it.

So Larian is in a tricky spot. It wanted to release Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox Series X and S at the same time as on PS5, but because of this pesky split-screen co-op issue on the S, it can’t.

IGN spoke to Larian boss Swen Vincke to discuss the situation. Understandably, he was at pains to avoid criticising Microsoft, and declined to comment when asked if he had requested a policy exemption (IGN understands at this stage in the Xbox Series lifecycle, Microsoft is sticking to its guns despite growing calls from the development community for the company to ditch its Series S launch requirements). Rather, Vincke pointed to the complexity of Baldur’s Gate 3 itself and the freedom it’s shooting for with split-screen co-op as the root cause of its troubles.

“You’re very free in what you do, more free than people expect,” Vincke said. “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.

“It’s not that we planned this. Our plan was that we wanted to have a simultaneous release. But we’ve been on this game for a long time. It’s a really big game. The amount of things you can do in it is insane. I think people will be surprised when they see everything. There’s constraints we have to overcome, so we just work on them. Some take more time.”

Vincke said Larian may have to make some “compromises” to get the Xbox version out, but declined to specify exactly what they are. “There may be some compromises we have to make, but we’re trying to be very limited in our compromises we have to make,” he said “That’s one of the reasons why we’re taking more time also.

“But I don’t want to jump ahead of the development team, which is doing remarkable things. I don’t want to say it’s going to be like this until we’ve finished and decided it’s good for release.”

Vincke pointed to an additional issue: the nature of Baldur’s Gate 3’s development. Larian’s engineers found optimisation work on the S version difficult because as content kept being added over the years its scope increased. “It was very hard for them to do this when the game wasn’t ‘finished finished’ yet, because all the content kept on coming,” Vincke explained. “Now they have everything, so they see what they’re up against.”

While this is frustrating for Larian, it’s a bad look for Microsoft. Its customers are missing out on one of the most promising role-playing games in years for who knows how long because of what many players will deem an arbitrary release policy. So it comes as no surprise to learn engineers from the Xbox Advanced Technology Group (ATG) have been drafted in to help Larian get the S version of Baldur’s Gate 3 up to scratch.

“We’ve certainly had support from Microsoft. They’ve been helping a lot.”

While Microsoft did not respond to IGN’s request for comment in time for publication, Vincke confirmed this support. “We’ve certainly had support from Microsoft,” he said. “We had support from the ATG group. They’ve been doing great. They’ve been helping a lot. Everybody wants this out on Xbox. It’s not that we don’t want it out on Xbox. It’s just that, our problem — and this is us, Larian — is that we just made a very big game. And it’s a very complicated game.

“We’re also not a developer with an infinite amount of resources. We are constrained in the amount of time each platform version is tested. The more permutations you start adding to it on a platform, the more complicated that becomes.

“I wish I could tell you we can do magic and miracles. We can’t. But I don’t think we should withhold a version that is ready from the world if we’re there. I don’t think that’s a good reason to stop it. Our PC players have been aiding making this game much better during Early Access. They’ve been waiting long enough. So it’s time for them to get their version in their hands.

“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. That’s why it’s important we release it now, 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.”

How much time? Vincke said Larian’s “ambition” is to release Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox Series X and S this year, but could not guarantee it.

“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 it’s something you say hey, this is really good, I want to play this with my buddies in multiplayer.”

The situation with Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox Series X and S highlights a looming problem heading towards Microsoft. As more and more developers look to make the most of the power of the PS5 and Xbox Series X, will having to release a version of their multiplatform games on the less powerful S hold them back? Or, in drastic cases such as Larian’s, hold Xbox versions back altogether?

In October, a VFX artist who had worked on an Xbox Series X and S game said in a now-deleted tweet that “many developers have been sitting in meetings for the past year desperately trying to get Series S launch requirements dropped”.

“Studios have been through one development cycle where Series S turned out to be an albatross around the neck of production, and now that games are firmly being developed with new consoles in mind, teams do not want to repeat the process,” the developer said.

Splitscreen appears to be an especially taxing feature for the Xbox Series S. We’ve already mentioned 343 had to scrap the feature for Halo Infinite, sparking a backlash from fans of the series. In May last year, Digital Foundry’s Alexander Battaglia said memory constraints were making Xbox Series S a “pain” to work with. “We’ve heard from multiple developers that they kind of feel the Series S is a bit of a pain at times – not the CPU or GPU power there, but it’s more like the memory constraints,” he said.

It seems unlikely Microsoft will let publishers and developers release their games on the Xbox Series X alone any time soon. It views the cheaper S as a key component of its console strategy, helping Xbox reach a broader range of players. But this means engineers are faced with increasingly intense headaches getting their games optimised for the S. This is a problem Microsoft appears to be aware of.

In a recent interview with Axios, Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty admitted developing for Xbox Series S alongside the X, PS5 and PC is “more work”. But he also said developers should find it easier once they’ve moved onto their second game for the platform, since they can “plan better, knowing where some of the sharp corners are”.

In the short-term, Larian and Microsoft’s work on the Xbox Series version of Baldur’s Gate 3 continues. But in the mid-term, as the current generation nears its peak, perhaps the platform holders will consider relaxing their launch requirements. It sounds like that would certainly go down well with developers, and potentially benefit gamers.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].