Xbox Series S’ technical hurdle delays RPG release to 2024
One of 2023’s highly anticipated game releases could face significant delays on Xbox Series X and S due to an “unforeseen technical hurdle” during development of Series S version.
Baldur’s Gate 3 should excite every RPG enthusiast out there! Larian Studios’ epic RPG can take over 200 hours to fully finish and is set to rival even Persona 5 Royal or Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition in terms of game play time. Also noteworthy, with its mega file size (over 130GB!) gamers won’t be able to preinstall before release day; that will likely prove frustratingly long for some gamers!
Baldur’s Gate 3 will hit PCs tomorrow (3 August), and PS5 on 6 September; its release on Xbox Series X/S remains uncertain, however this delay does not appear to be related to an exclusivity agreement; Pure Xbox has confirmed it’s because there has been an issue with Series S version only.
“Split-screen has been our main struggle on Series S so far, which is taking longer but progress is being made,” Michael Douse, Larian Studios’ Director of Publishing tweeted. This represents a substantial technical hurdle but without it we would not be able to release our game on this ecosystem.
Douse went on to explain, “Far from being exclusive, we do not have an exclusivity deal that prevents us from launching on Xbox. Instead, the technical hurdle we are experiencing stems from feature parity requirements; thus we cannot remove split-screen and must continue trying to make it work,” as per Douse. Engineers at his studio were working diligently towards accomplishing what no other RPG of its scale has managed before – seamless drop-in/drop-out co-op on Series S and will hopefully have news by year-end.”
As its release is not expected until sometime before December of 2023, this news comes as disappointing but at least we know something will eventually take place.