Baldur’s Gate 3 Is Coming to Xbox This Year After All

Baldur’s Gate 3, one of the year's highest rated games, will come to Xbox consoles before the end of 2023.

Swen Vincke, CEO and founder of Larian Studios, posted to X (formerly Twitter) Thursday that an Xbox port of the sprawling Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game will be dropping soon.

“Super happy to confirm that after meeting @XboxP3 [Head of Xbox Phil Spencer] yesterday, we’ve found a solution that allows us to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox players this year still, something we’ve been working towards for quite some time,” Vincke tweeted. “All improvements will be there, with split-screen co-op on Series X.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 launched on PC earlier this month and has quickly become one of the biggest launches of the year both critically and commercially. But while the game is set to release Sept. 6 on PlayStation 5, just a few weeks after the PC version, the Xbox version was in limbo thanks to the technical limitations of the less powerful Xbox Series S.

The problem lies in Microsoft’s mandate that games released on Xbox platforms have feature parity across both Xbox Series console SKUs. Though Larian had no trouble getting the game’s split-screen co-op to run on the Series X, as it has with powerful PCs and the PS5, getting the feature to run on the weaker Series S proved to be more involved.

Vincke confirmed that, after the team’s conversation with Spencer at GamesCom this week, they managed to find a way around Microsoft’s policy.

“The Series S will not feature split-screen co-op, but will also include cross-save progression between Steam and Xbox Series.”

As pointed out by Axios’ Stephen Totilo, split-screen being ditched on the Series S appears to show that Microsoft is willing to be more flexible about its policy.

The Messenger has reached out to Microsoft about whether Larian is being given an exception to the policy, or if this is a sign of the parity mandate as a whole being loosened.

Despite Larian's prior inability to release on Xbox when it would have liked, Vincke has previously defended Microsoft’s policy.

“I think it’s an acceptable proposition to say that we have two devices and we want to ensure compatibility between the two,” Vincke said during an appearance on the Friends Per Second podcast earlier this month. “It just requires additional development effort.”