Baldur’s Gate 3 Xbox release still on target for this year

31.10.2023 - 15:53 / thesixthaxis.com / Phil Spencer / Swen Vincke

The Baldur’s Gate 3 Xbox release is still on schedule to take place before the end of 2023, Larian boss Swen Vincke has said in a quick update on game’s development progress.

Writing on the thing that was once called Twitter, Vincke said, “Latest on the Xbox – being actively playtested, still on schedule for this year. We’ll announce the exact release date when we’re sure it’s done.”

It’s a real no news is good news kind of situation, but since the last we heard was already rather vague, it’s good to hear that things are still on track.

Baldur’s Gate 3 got its full release for PC in August (after a good few years in Early Access), with the PS5 version following a month later. It was half expected that the game simply wouldn’t be coming to Xbox, with Larian initially saying that it was being held back by bugs, and that they could only commit if those issues were resolved.

Those issues were resolved when Vincke sat down with Xbox boss Phil Spencer at Gamescom and hashed out a specific exception to an Xbox platform rule on parity – specifically feature parity between Xbox Series X and Series S consoles. With Spencer’s blessing, the Series S version will not ship with split-screen co-op, which will mean it misses out on one key game feature when compared to Series X, PlayStation 5 and PC. They’ll be trying to add it to the mix down the line.

Following that, Vincke said that “the Xbox Series X version was already in good shape last time I looked at it,” but noted that the Series S version could take some more work as they “really want to hit 60fps across the board on everything.” That’s an admirable goal.

In our Baldur’s Gate 3 review, Dom said, “Baldur’s Gate 3 is an exquisite example of a role-playing game, and an incredible recreation of the Dungeons & Dragons experience. It is, in a word, unmissable.”

Source: not-Twitter