Xbox Series S restrictions criticized following major release delay
Developers have long raised concerns over the technical constraints of Xbox Series S consoles – and Baldur’s Gate 3 debacle only compounded these reservations.
Baldur’s Gate 3, Larian Studios’s epic RPG, has finally hit PCs worldwide and PlayStation 5 owners should receive it soon thereafter (6 September). Xbox users were originally supposed to see it next, however due to technical restrictions with Series S they have had to wait longer due to split-screen issues taking longer to fix, said Michael Douse from Larian Studios’ director of publishing: ‘Our issue has always been getting split-screen working properly which takes more time but progress is being made.” “This technical hurdle presents huge difficulties; yet without it we cannot release our RPG on that ecosystem.”
“Far from being exclusive, there’s no exclusivity deal that prevents us from launching on Xbox. Instead, our technical hurdle is split-screen feature parity; as part of this obligation we cannot remove this feature, and so continue trying to make it work as best we can.” “Several engineers are hard at work trying to achieve what no other RPG of this scale has accomplished before: seamless drop-in/drop-out co-op gameplay on Series S; hopefully an update by end of 2018!”
Now, as reported by DualShockers, Remedy communications director Thomas Puha has agreed with Douse’s remarks and tweeted, “I understand Larian’s frustration on Series S; optimizing at the end isn’t enough; taking technical limitations into account from day one of development can only come after many iterations – nobody likes thinking that way when creating their game.”
The Series S console is clearly an attractive proposition from a consumer’s standpoint; as one of the least expensive consoles currently on sale, but as demonstrated here it pushes against what defines next-gen gameplay – often negatively.
