Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, has conceded that it is a loss that Xbox owners aren’t able to play Baldur’s Gate 3 at the moment.
As a clarification, there are no exclusivity arrangements that are affecting Baldur’s Gate 3‘s presence on Xbox Series X and S. In fact, it is Microsoft’s policy stating that a game should share the same features across both consoles in spite of hardware differences that is contributing to the delay.
“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 splitscreen co-op to work to the same standard on both Xbox Series X/S, which is a requirement for us to ship,” said Larian Studios in February.
In an interview with IGN, Spencer said that Microsoft “[wants] to make sure that games when they’re launching on competitive platforms are also launching on Xbox”.
Though he appreciated that this could cause frustration for Microsoft, developers and players, this policy is as strict as it is in order to guarantee that “console gaming is accessible to more people”.
“We’re going to learn from this experience as well because we don’t love that,” continued Spencer about delays. “But I don’t think it’s something that’s a fatal flaw in the system.”
On Baldur’s Gate 3, the executive said that it is a “great game” and Larian Studios is “an important partner” to Microsoft.
“It’s a game I want to see on the platform, and we have resources that helped in terms of making sure it’s going to… I think they’ve said it’s going to ship by the end of the year. I think that’s their words in terms of what they’ve said. But we should together come up with clarity to set some expectations for Xbox fans, and I look forward to doing that,” he concluded.
Recently, Larian Studios announced that Baldur’s Gate 3 would rethink its strategy to developing and rolling out updates for the game after the chaos caused by the fourth hotfix.