Xbox Series S 'technical hurdle' delays major RPG to 2024

One of 2023’s most exciting game releases is facing a major delay on Xbox Series X and S, thanks to a “technical hurdle” encountered in the development of the Series S version.

If you’re not excited for Baldur’s Gate 3, you should be. The enormous RPG from Larian Studios will apparently take over 200 hours to complete in its entirety, putting the likes of even Persona 5 Royal and Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition to shame. As you’d imagine, it’s got a mega chonky file size to boot, and gamers won’t be able to pre-install before launch. That’s going to be a devastating wait on release day.

Take a look at the trailer for Baldur’s Gate 3 right here.

While Baldur’s Gate 3 is set to release on PC tomorrow (3 August), and on PS5 on 6 September, it’s still unknown when it’s going to hit Xbox Series X/S. This isn’t because of an exclusivity deal, either - as Pure Xbox reports, it’s been confirmed that the delay is solely due to a problem with the Series S version.

“We’ve said many times in the past that the issue is getting split-screen working on the Series S, which is taking more time, but is in progress,” Michael Douse, Larian Studios’ director of publishing tweeted. “This is a huge technical hurdle, but we are unable to release the game on the ecosystem without this feature.

“Far from being exclusive, we have no exclusivity deal that prevents us from launching on Xbox. The issue is a technical hurdle. We cannot remove the split-screen feature because we are obliged to launch with feature parity, and so continue to try and make it work,” Douse continued. “We have quite a few engineers working very hard to do what no other RPG of this scale has achieved: seamless drop-in, drop-out co-op on Series S. We hope to have an update by the end of the year.”

“End of the year” certainly implies that we’re not going to be seeing Baldur’s Gate 3 release on Xbox in 2023, which is unfortunate, but at least it’s happening at some point.