Xbox Owners Can’t Play One of the Biggest RPG Launches of 2023

UPDATE: Larian Studios this afternoon clarified that Baldur’s Gate 3 is planned for the Xbox, but there are some technical issues to iron out.

“We’ve had an Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate 3 in the works for some time, but we have run into some technical issues—particularly with split-screen co-op. We are still working on an Xbox version of BG3, but we’re not yet confident enough to announce it,” a community manager for Larian Studios wrote on Reddit.

“We don’t like announcing anything until we’re ready, because we don’t want to get people’s hopes up until we’re sure we can deliver,” the studio added. “There’s no platform exclusivity preventing us from releasing BG3 on Xbox day and date, should that be a technical possibility.”

Original Story:
Larian Studios, the developer and publisher of Baldur’s Gate 3, has decided not to release a version of the game for Microsoft’s Xbox consoles.

Typically this happens because the developer has signed an exclusivity agreement with a platform holder such as Sony, but that’s not the case here. As Eurogamer reports(Opens in a new window), a spokesperson for Larian confirmed that, “Right now we’re planning to release Baldur’s Gate 3 for PC, Mac, GeForce Now and PS5.”

Back in 2019, Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke stated his development studio will not “participate in the exclusivity game(Opens in a new window).” And sure enough, the Larian spokesperson went on today to explain, “we have no exclusivity and will announce support for additional platforms if and when we’re ready.” Vincke also tweeted today(Opens in a new window), “Relax. We still aren’t playing the exclusivity game.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 is planned for release on Aug. 31, 2023. It will be available to play on Windows, macOS, and PS5. An early access launch back in October 2020 saw it become the best-selling game(Opens in a new window) on both Steam(Opens in a new window) and GOG(Opens in a new window), with concurrent players on Steam peaking at 70,000 on the first day alone. And for some reason, many players decided to generate generic protagonists using the extensive character customization options available.

I suspect representatives from Xbox are either already talking to Larian, or eager to do so, to try and secure a release of the game for Xbox Series X and Series S consoles. However, with Vincke confirming twice now that his studio won’t play the exclusivity game, don’t expect an Xbox version to include anything extra in terms of content or features, if it appears at all.