There is currently a question mark hanging over the Xbox versions of Baldur’s Gate 3. They will be released but delayed due to the Xbox Series S struggling to handle split screen collaboration at an acceptable level of performance.
An additional complication is that Microsoft wants to achieve feature parity between the Series X and S versions of games – so much so that there is speculation that Larian will not be able to release one Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate 3 with split-screen co-op and another without it. .
We last heard from Larian that she was working on this issue and weighing some “compromises” – it was suggested that split screen co-op on Xbox Series S could be cancelled. Therefore, journalists in a conversation with the head of Larian Sven Vincke (Swen Vincke) asked him about it.
“It’s not easy,” Vincke replied after a short pause.
The team has worked hard to make it work, but it’s still working on it. And the problem with optimization is that you finish one thing, and then a new one appears. So here we are dealing with a situation where we are just working. The team will get through this because they managed to get Divinity: Original Sin 2 to work on the Switch – but it took a while.
Does this mean that Vincke is sure that this will happen?
I have confidence in the team. If possible, they will do it. But it’s a very big game. Someone said something to me the other day and I thought it was a very good way to say it. They talked about Call of Duty and said that every time a player enters the game, a small zone forms around him, and the more such zones, the slower it becomes. In games like BG3, it’s fine if one character walks around the city, but if the party splits up and four characters walk in four different directions around the city, and they start doing the same thing that I do – fireballs, [и т.д.] – this is a lot of simulations that should occur on one screen. And it’s loading. It requires memory.
And here’s the elephant in the room: if Larian can’t deliver a standard split-screen co-op experience on the Xbox Series S, can she, if she wants to – mindful of Microsoft’s push for feature parity – remove it?
“In terms of feature ratio, split screen is a must for us,” he said, “and we don’t want to release a game without split screen, so we wouldn’t do it.”
