The lead discussion point in DF Direct Weekly #101 centres on Larian’s announcement that while Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t a console exclusive, currently there’s no release date for the Xbox Series version of the game owing to technical issues. The game is in development for Xbox, there are no exclusivity deals, but there are challenges in getting split-screen co-op working on Xbox Series S – and that’s causing a hold-up.
“We’ve had an Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate 3 in development for some time now,” a statement from Larian says. “We’ve run into some technical issues in developing the Xbox port that have stopped us feeling 100% confident in announcing it until we’re certain we’ve found the right solutions – specifically, we’ve been unable to get split-screen co-op to work to the same standard on both Xbox Series X and S, which is a requirement for us to ship.”
The key question here is why split-screen co-op is a ‘requirement’, which we’ll discuss momentarily but the developer is quick to point out that “there’s no platform exclusivity preventing us from releasing BG3 on Xbox day and date, should that be a technical possibility. If and when we do announce further platforms, we want to make sure each version lives up to our standards and expectations.”
