'Baldur's Gate 3' will come to Xbox this year, but with one caveat

Gaming's biggest surprise hit of 2023 will come to Xbox consoles this year, after all.

In a series of tweets on Thursday, Larian Studios head Swen Vincke confirmed that the much-heralded Baldur's Gate 3 will indeed hit Xbox Series X and S later in 2023. PC gamers got access to the Dungeons & Dragons-based RPG first in early August, and the PlayStation 5 version of Baldur's Gate 3 is set to launch on Sept. 2. Whether the game would arrive at all for Xbox players had been the subject of much contemplation for months, but now we know it's actually happening.

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There are a couple of concerns to note here. One is that no definitive release date was given. Presumably Larian won't launch on Xbox at the same time as its quickly-arriving Playstation 5 release date, given how close Thursday's announcement is cutting it.

Much more pressing is the lack of local, split-screen co-op play on Xbox Series S. Per a July tweet from another Larian employee, getting local co-op to work on the less powerful of the two Xbox consoles proved to be such a big headache that it held up the Xbox release entirely. That's not a problem anymore, per Vincke, but it does mean the cheaper Xbox won't get that feature at all.

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That's a bit of a bummer for people who opted for the $350 Series S as their gateway into the next generation of gaming. So far, some Xbox games have been downgraded visually for the Series S, but major gameplay features typically don't get cut to make a game run on the cheaper console. It may be a first for Baldur's Gate 3, but here's hoping it won't happen very often going forward.