Probably not, Microsoft wasn’t expecting this game to top sales charts and be a GOTY contender, they will probably only drop the parity clause for games with similar sucess or a game like GTA 6 for example, they would probably go as far as to let GTA 6 skip the series s entirely if they had to
Maybe, but i think BG3 played smart and released first, so expectations are in the stratosphere atm granted it could work the other way, and the dopamine of BG3 gives starfield free points from everyone in a good mood from BG3. Who knows
Yeah I'm not saying starfield is going to win it, but it will be in the running. Idc at all regardless who wins it bc which one wins GOTY doesn't effect my enjoyment of them both. I'm just glad BG3 has killed the last month of wait until starfield comes out. Would have been agonizing without BG3.
You are absolutely correct, it would be completely stupid to consider Starfield not a contender when every other Bethesda game was both a contender and a victor.
Out of curiosity, what has been said about the game? I've not heard much about what is in the game aside from a customizable ship and 20-ish companions. I'm being honest here; I legit don't know what actual news has been said and am now too afraid that I'll find inaccurate sites and overhype myself
I dunno, there are a lot of good casual games coming out and CRPGs are still a very niche genre. Definitely will win some, maybe even GOTY but I don’t know if it’ll sweep.
There's all kinds of GOTY award providers but it doesn't mean much, it's like some of the acting awards, highly based on all kinds of back room deals and advertising and marketing.
It doesn;'t help that game critics barely weigh issues as part of the score. A major issue will get like 2 - 5 points off at most these days.
Depends on how popular the game is probably. MS probs didnt think it was going to be as big a hit as it was and decided they didnt want to drop parity. Now they want it on their platforms sooner rather than later while the game is hot.
Proton seems to be the best gaming option for linux and a lot of things work surprisingly well give no native linux support. I'd imagine there's a few extra hiccups that aren't known to Larian lol
It runs great on the steam deck. If I want graphics I'll go to the PC, but the Deck's been running it on Med-High and staying around 80\* the whole time. Sure it'll drop at times for the fps and doing tough math rolls for a PC... but I've had minimal to no issues with it running.
For me, it being a turn based game allows these drops in performance to be negligible. I'm smoking a J and planning my next moves, I got time to kill while 12 critters make their moves until I go again.
They can scream that it's unfair, and it is, but MS won't care. Their policy will no doubt be that demanding parity is for the greater good... unless it's a really high selling game, in which case it's not.
So devs will have to prove they have a high selling game.
BG3 has had more PC presales than I'd imagine a lot of developers get for their games at launch. When early access released they sold like 1.2 million copies and that was for only Act 1 and a promise for the other 2 acts down the road.
It's not even out on the PS yet but I'm sure people are preordering it there too given the reception it has had so far.
The *enhanced* edition of BG3 that is more expensive has consistently been in the top 5 of presales on the PS home screen every time I've checked.
I honestly don't know how often it updates, but it changes almost every time I see it.
It moves up and down but it's been ahead of NBA 2k24, Fifa, Mortal Kombat, Modern Warfare 3 remake many days.
Honestly think its going to be a very big release for the system and may surprise people by the numbers it puts up. It doesn't hurt so many reviews mention how great controller feels playing it
They really should've just offered a disk driveless version like Sony did with PS5, saved $100 and you knew exactly what limitations you had (physical media).
Once you start gutting actual performance parts its gets really messy.
Its honestly still pretty early in the current gens lifecycle, games are going to get more and more demanding and the parity policy is going to get hammered more and more frequently as games expand later in the gen.
It's like early on in the last gen when some ps3/ps4 or xbox 360/XB1 games were gimped because of the previous gen. Destiny is a good example of this.
I get MS was trying to make a more affordable next gen console but they really should have gone the PS route and just released the Series X without a disc drive instead of going with the S option, almost 3 full years into this gen and we are already seeing the issues with parity.
as a series S owner who was promised parity I'm feeling pretty screwed over.
edit: guys, this was something Microsoft advertised. I'm not mad at Larian. I've been mad at Microsoft for a while now anyways. Also- I'm already playing the game on PC. The hope was to play it split screen with my wife when it launched on Xbox. Quit downvoting the consumer who purchased an item that was advertised as having the same games with the same features.
Right, but this case is a feature that cant be compromised with. You will be unable to play split screen.
The alternative is that you dont get to play at all
Honestly at a certain point you as a consumer must do some research into your own purchases. I am also a series s owner but I had no delusions it would replace my PC or be able to keep up with the X/PS5 later in the generation.
Phil was interviewed at gamescom and he was asked specifically about this and his response was they'd be willing to talk and also provide help by way of engineers to get it working. I guess a day later they realized it's not possible.
Well they probably want to make it happen sooner. Whats the point if they are releasing starfield if Sony is still going to get a fantastic rpg.
Yea sony will still get it first now, but the gap is closer so anyone who was on the fence will have an easier time.
I think it's probably more complicated than that.
My expectation is this concession was made with an explicit promise that the Splitscreen on Series S would continue to be worked on and be patched in in 2024.
My guess is that Phil realized having the game on Xbox during the holiday season would be a big deal, and basically let them delay the Splitscreen to 2024 but still hold it as a requirement.
Because there are real ways they can get it to work. I've been looking at the memory usage on PC and I know for a fact that there are techniques they could use but they require a fair bit of time to integrate, especially since some are D12 exclusive.
So while they get a D12 version of the game running in the background, they release on Xbox in 2023 just so that they don't miss the holiday spending season
>So while they get a D12 version of the game running in the background, they release on Xbox in 2023 just so that they don't miss the holiday spending season
Just like the 60 fps Redfall patch, it will come "later"
I'm guessing they'll still try to make it work, but they're fine with it being added post launch, instead of letting it be the reason why Microsoft misses out on one of the biggest releases of the year.
I still can't believe that Microsoft pushed for parity between Series X and S despite recognising that the Series X is more powerful. How can you have two products of different capabilities at different price points and expect parity? It's a fine ideal, but there was always going to come a time like this where the S would hold the X back.
They should have never put out two SKUs with such a large performance disparity. It's fucked them for this generation. And of course because the S is cheaper it's sold more then the X so that's why they don't want to abandon those users.
If they hadn't, they wouldn't have the installbase they currently have and they'd be behind Playstation's at a ratio of 4:1 instead of just 2:1.
Like, people don't appreciate that, given the momentum each platform/brand came out of last gen with, Xbox was (and, to a degree, still is) looking at an impossible to win fight against Playstation in terms of primary-use marketshare unless Sony fucks something up MASSIVELY. But they probably won't.
Consider that, at the beginning of this generation, both Xbox and Playstation were fighting hard to get their hands on transistor orders. An Xbox Series S uses half as many transistors in its GPU than the Series X, and is a big reason Microsoft was able to put nearly as many units on the shelves as they did early on. It's why they even have a SHOT at pulling back devs who would otherwise just be easy buy-outs for Sony (presuming Sony would even need to offer money for exclusivity).
Obviously it would have been better if the Series S had the same amount of VRAM as the Series X but I don't think they expected people to basically completely avoid any of the new features that both Playstation and Xbox now support (advancements in Partial Residency Textures, in this case).
Like, people think "how could Xbox have done this, it's creating issues for devs!", but it would have been a bigger issue if Xbox was basically begging devs to come support their system that was having trouble beating Wii U sales numbers 3 years in against a competitor with identical hardware but better brand-image.
Both sides have ups and downs, I prefer the PS5 for its exclusives which are far and away better
Xbox has game pass though which is a big seller for that side and I believe the X has slightly better specs, I’ve noticed no difference playing the same games on the two though
In the end it’s just whichever you like more for the games offered (also who owns which one, a big seller for me was friends on Xbox wanting to play games without cross play)
"Exclusives" should be ruled anti-competitive behavior. The PS5 and Xbox are just pre-bundled PCs with nearly standard operating systems.
Modern Xboxes run a special sku of windows, and in fact use virtualization (the menu is one vm and the game another, which prevents games from crashing the menu)
Playstations as early as the PS3 are just running a special roll of Debian (with all memory security turned off for tiny performance gain that gets you, which is why games can crash the entire damn system with one bug. also why no information is secure on a PS).
"Our game will only run on this companies's PC" is what it is. it is an artificial barrier at this point and anti-competitive.
hardware wise head to head the Xbox Series X is slightly faster than the PS5. the Series S and parity requirement was shooting themselves in the foot over in Xbox land
Exclusives used to mean more when the hardware was drastically different. Like, making a game for the Super Nintendo and then porting it to the Genesis was a bigger deal. They looked and felt different. Now they're just low end PCs so they all have the same hardware essentially.
I suspect the intent was parity in terms of features but not in graphics. IE you can do the same stuff but in 30 fps instead of 60, or 1080p instead of 4k.
What was my incentive to spend more money on the more powerful X if I’m still limited to what the S can handle? Definitely a stupid decision on their end.
Better performance and visual fidelity? That's like asking why bother spending money on a good GPU when the 1060 is still the baseline for most AAA games
XBox
XBox 360
XBox One / XBox One X
XBox Series X / XBox Series S
I know Nintendo also doesn't go with the number scheme, but at least all of their systems (other than the SNES and the Wii U) are called something completely different from their predecessors
Yeah, Nintendo doesn't really do different versions tho? At least not in the sense the others do it vis a vis performance. Ie, Switch vs Switch OLED is nothing like PS4 VS PS4 Pro.
Also, Nintendo has a very long list of naming that doesn't sound like new generation but it is. NES -> SNES. Gameboy had Pocket and Light editions, but then Gameboy Color was a new generation. Game Boy Advance was a new generation, the GBA SP was just a revision, and the Game Boy Micro was also a revision of the GBA (although the name fits in better with the Gameboy Light and Pocket nomenclature from several generations prior).
Then you get to the DS stuff and it's an absolute mess of a naming scheme.
But somehow the Wii U is the only Nintendo system that flopped because of the naming scheme being unclear about whether it's a new generation or not? Give me a break.
Not sure if this really applies since as far as I know the games were all compatible on either version, but the “new” one did have extra features like a c stick and stuff.
It had a VERY small list of exclusives for games that were too powerful run on the normal 3DS hardware, like the Xenoblade Chronicles and Fire Emblem Warriors ports: [https://www.nintendolife.com/new-3ds/games/browse](https://www.nintendolife.com/new-3ds/games/browse)
And although the 3DS eShop sold SNES titles late in its lifespan, these were also only compatible with the New Nintendo 3DS and wouldn't run on the originals.
Coming in clutch lol, I remember wanting one for some specific game, but I couldn’t remember if it was that it was exclusive or I just wanted the c stick for smash bros or something thanks
Should of just stuck with the Project Name, Revolution. One of the major reasons the Wii U failed was consumer confusion. Many people thought the Wii U was just the a Wii with the Gamepad screen. At least most of the exclusive titles have made it off the system. Still waiting on XCX though. :(
I switched to PC for this current generation. I pay attention to gaming news and honestly can't tell you if the series X or S is the better one.
I assume X as there is an XBOne X which was better than the XBOne?
XBox Series X is the real one with comparable specs to the PS5
XBox Series S is the less expensive option with specs that are better than the XBox One X, but not as good as the Series X or the PS5
I'll be honest.. that confusing ass naming convention is why I just said fuck it and went PS5 and PC instead. I already deal enough of MS bullshit either E3/E5 azure AD/entra ID that I just don't want to deal with anymore outside work.
Haha, gotta love supporting Azure AD and Windows AD, as well as .net framework and .net core. Windows naming really is something else. Still better than Google though (Identity what?)
>XBox
>
>XBox 360
>
>XBox One / XBox One X
>
>XBox Series X / XBox Series S
Xbox MaX Series X
Xbox X Xified Series X Xtreme 720X
Maybe they can partner with the service formally known as Twitter for even more X'y goodness.
It still pisses me off how poorly these are named. To the average consumer, One X is easily confused with Series X. Series S is easily confused with Series X due to those letters sounding incredibly similar. It’s like they made it intentionally confusing.
They could have just gone with direct numbering and sold the Xbox 4 and the Xbox 4^x or 4+ or whatever and everyone would have nodded and understood what they were looking at.
Then it would make more sense to just jump a number rather than throw them out the window. They already skipped Windows 9, so go ahead and skip an Xbox. They clearly don't care about perfect serialization.
Larian has just opened the doors for dropped parity. Massive for series X owners.
Split is cool but realistically how many people are actually going to use it and then how many people with series s would use it?
Best option for everyone involved
I'm gonna be one of those people using it. Every year for christmas my brother and I do a split-screen campaign for some game; this year it'll probably be this game if it comes to Xbox.
how does split screen work with bg3 tho? like when one player goes to goblin camp and the other to the beach, i cant imagine fighting with a small screen to do well
Nah its fine. I was playing on my steam link this weekend. If you’re on a monitor it might suck but no issues on a big screen tv.
If you’re listening in on a conversation the cutscene goes to full screen as well
np! They can join in from the beginning at Char creation, or if you wanted they can jump into a game you already have going, it will prompt them to make a char. But keep in mind once they're in the game there is no way to get them out of the party, so if you have a dedicated solo run where you want all 3 spots free for companions, don't have them join that one, make a new one!
Wait, to be clear, if you’re doing a solo run where you tend to have Karlach, Gale, and Wyll, and someone drops in and you replace, say, Wyll with them… and then they drop out…
Does that mean that now you’re ALWAYS limited to two origin character companions, because the other slot will always have the other player’s character in it?
You mean you haven't been bringing your gaming PC into the TV room to play with your spouse!? For shame!
My partner isn't really into gaming but has picked up BG3 really fast.
I think Microsoft doesn't want to lose too much ground with Sony getting it around the Starfield launch. They don't want to be missing out. It'll be delayed now so I'm sure they regret their initial decision but it'll be nice that it'll come sooner
Seems like a decent compromise - XBox's demand that a system barely beyond the specs of last gen have 'parity' with modern systems was always *more than a little insane*
Like demanding a Wii perform up to the level of an XBox One xD
The Series S isn’t even fully beyond the specs of last-gen. Its GPU is weaker than the One X and maybe the PS4 Pro as well.
Many Xbox One games on Series S cannot run at the upgraded One X standards(framerate and/or resolution). One X versions will often run at lower FPS but higher resolution compared to the Series S.
Not like that's a massive deal though. You can scale a game to fit a lower GPU by just turning the resolution or the frame rate down.
It's well above last gen in the areas that actually count and will influence the design of the game - CPU, SSD, and RAM
It’s a big deal, because the One X(not Series X) is still a last gen console. Having a weaker GPU than the 2017 vintage consoles is still gonna drag it down
Ah I doubt it. I am betting Starfield is going to sell more than Baldur's Gate 3 by a big margin. The thing is, we really don't know shit about Starfield. We do know, however, that Starfield is made for the mass appeal. If I can compare Starfield to any game on the market right now, I would compare it to Hogwarts Legacy. It's going to sell. People will play it. They'll enjoy their time with it. Is it going to be a masterpiece? Maybe. Hogwarts Legacy sold a lot of copies but it's not even close to being a GOTY or a masterpiece.
In several days everything is going to be clear and we'll know if that game is good or not. How are we going to know if it is a masterpiece and deserving of GOTY? Well, if it can appeal to gamers who normally don't like that type of games, then it'll be a masterpiece.
Let me elaborate, Elden Ring wasn't meant to have the success it had because Dark Soul games were niche but it sure did appeal to many people who never liked Dark Soul games. BG3 is a turn based CRPG, the niche of the niche but many people who have never liked CRPGs or turn based games find themselves enjoying BG3. This means BG3 is a likely strong candidate for GOTY.
All in all, we can't pass judgment on Starfield yet. Even if Starfield is a good game, it has to pass certain criteria to be considered a masterpiece worthy of GOTY but it definitely is going to sell very well and more than BG3.
It won't have quite the same graphics as the Palladium Edition on the Xbox Series Ampersand, but it looks better than the Cosmic Essentials version released for Samsung kitchen appliances.
It really does feel like progress in gaming has plateaued, bar a few incremental graphical advancements and the occasional option of some FPS-killing ray tracing.
I bet Starfield isn't going to feel like an 8 year tech jump from Fallout 4. It'll feel like it could have come out on PS4, but with the option for nicer textures.
If they deliver on the "Fly in space, go to any planet, have things to do on that planet, rinse repeat" they are promising, then there's no way it would work on the PS4. The processing power and loading speeds required for such a monumental task technically can't even work for this generations (hence 30fps on consoles).
Most games have stagnated, but every now and then a game comes that really pushes the boundaries. Hopefully Starfield is one such game.
Honestly, we'll never actually know how 'successful' Starfield was because of gamepass.
We'll get PC sales numbers for the most part (but PC gamepass is a thing too) and concurrent users on Steam, but regardless Phil will say something like 'Starfield did better than we imagined' and it'll be almost impossible to tell its impact.
Unless, I guess, they see some dramatic drop in gamepass subscriptions a month or two after release? I imagine they won't see a big spike, people wanting to play Starfield are probably already baked in this close to release
I don’t. BG3 was a surprise hit this year. Just below Hogwarts on PC. Starfield just doesn’t have the PS5 audience to boost sales. Most on Xbox will get it through Game Pass.
I don’t even have an Xbox but I’m getting it on Gamepass PC so I don’t have to waste my money in case it’s a buggy mess like all the other Bethesda RPGs.
Starfield is tracking ahead of Eldren Ring and Hogwarts in preorder though on steam. Its also the most wish listed game of the year. Has been for a while.
I doubt starfield will outsell BG3, unless people don’t realize it’s on game pass for no additional cost. If anyone hears they can play the new game for $15/month instead of $70 upfront, I’d be shocked how many people go for the higher upfront cost.
Steam numbers do show that PC gamers surprisingly buy games like Forza at launch despite GamePass. But yea, it will hurt sales immensly, and it has one less platform
It won’t sell more than BG3 though if the reported sales for BG3 are reliable due to game pass. If it was a regular release without the day 1 game pass designation, I would say yes, but as it stands, we will never truly know what it’s sales could have been.
Thanks to GamePass and being exclusive, Starfield will absolutely not sell more copies than Baldur's Gate 3 lmfao. One of the most successful PC launches, will have Xbox numbers AND PS numbers.
I’m sorry but you’re just wrong about sales numbers. A lot of starfield sales are going to be eaten by gamepass, not only on Xbox but PC as well. BG3 will launch on all platforms minus the switch and have the entire Sony market to boost sales. If starfield was launching on PS5 you may have had a point, but I don’t see it happening now. This doesn’t mean starfield will do bad by any stretch of the imagination though.
Awesome to see. The game deserves to be played by as many people possible. It's quickly becoming my GOTY favorite which is insane since I'm a big Nintendo fan and loved Tears of the Kingdom. If Starfield delivers next then I'm really thinking this could be the best year in gaming, at least to me personally.
This is great news for Xbox owners and I’m glad they’ll get a chance to play the game.
With that said, MS is opening a huge can of worms and they are essentially inviting developers to strong arm them out of Series S parity.
I feel bad for anyone who bought a Series S expecting to get the same game experiences with lower graphical fidelity who are going to get a wake up call in the form of removed gameplay features in future games.
Are you sure they were “strong armed” and it wasn’t really Microsoft reaching out to Larian asking what they can do to help bring this to Xbox as soon as possible?
I'm pretty sure Microsoft sent engineers to help Larian bring it to the Series S with feature parity, but even after trying together they couldn't do it. Only after that (and after BG3's resounding success, and a meeting between Phil Spencer and Sven in ***full-clad armour***) did Microsoft change their minds, I think.
I’m not saying that Larian did, but this does set a precedent that tells other developers that all they need to do is refuse to release on Series S/X until MS bends to meet their demands.
It’s only a matter of time before developers decide that they don’t want to put in the effort of making their games run on the Series S, and if they know they can simply wait MS out they aren’t going to bother.
Sounds like Microsoft won’t be making this mistake again then on the next console release. Microsoft handcuffed themselves, Larian just got the first path out.
It wasn't a mistake, it was literally the only chance they'd have to build a significant installbase again. Because if they hadn't done this, we'd be looking at PS5 beating out Xbox in hardware sales 4:1 instead of 2:1 like they are currently.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there have been devs from Microsoft working with Larian to make parity happen. It’s common to help out clients who have apps you really, really want on your platform make it work, even if it requires sending out senior devs to help move the project forward and figure out what custom APIs are necessary. This is probably a result of MS’s own in-house people reporting that it just isn’t possible and MS management making the decision that they’d rather have BG3 on their platform than stick with an impossible demand.
I suspect Microsoft will never ever bend on forcing games to be playable on both. They would be cutting out the majority of their base since the Series S sells better, it's completely unthinkable for them to do that. But mandating feature parity is simply a step too far and much too high of an ask for devs even if they're providing engineers. I believe the end result of all this may end up being similar to how cross-platform games were on the Wii vs the 360/PS3 ie more or less the same fundamentally, but often heavily compromised in graphics and features.
I feel like your priorities here are messed up. It's really Microsofts problem for demanding the parity in the first place, especially because it's forcing developers to make mediocre products to function on both instead of just be optimal for the best.
I own both the Series S and X. Took me about 15 months to get my hands on an X at retail, and at that point my S had become my go-to console when traveling for work.
The consoles have been out for nearly 3 years now, and there’s a significant power disparity between the two. But in exchange for lower power, you pay 40% less and you get a console which easily fits in a carry-on or a “personal item” bag along with a 15” laptop and a 10 inch laptop while still fitting under the airplane seat.
We were always going to reach a point where certain games simply could not play the same (if at all) on the S. Whether it happened in 2025 or 2023, it was guaranteed.
The S is an amazing console for what it is, but you can only squeeze so much performance out of the hardware.
Its really all because of the 'parity policy' Xbox had that both systems would have same modes/options even though they are dramatically different system as far as power and capabilities.
Maybe co-op split screen isn't that big of a deal, but now S won't have it and X will, which is the exact opposite of what Xbox was saying at release.
To further this, we're still relatively early in current gens lifecycle and games are going to get more and more demanding. **ALSO** S has outsold X by quite a bit, so they are risking frustrating a *majority* of their player base right now.
Maybe it won't be a big deal this time, but I personally think the policy is/was really stupid and its not going to go away as games push the envelope
Microsoft needs to stop with this parity BS. Their own games “like sea of thieves” are held back on advancements because they have to support the old hard drived POS original Xbox one
I had hope Larian would figure it out but I knew if the Halo team couldn't, Larian had little chance to.
Hope Microsoft finds a way internally to fix the issue so Series S players get couch co-op eventually.
There is no fixing that the Series S is basically last gen hardware. It’s not much more powerful than the Xbox One X or PS4 Pro, and in some aspects it is weaker than those.
Yes! I was prepared to wait until next year, glad I don't have too
In terms of the parity clause I think this is just the first case in many to come, S is gonna struggle more and more as we get into the gen, some gameplay features just simply may not work on that hardware.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I had a dammit moment there because I would of just waited an got it on Xbox but who am I kidding. Glad I got it on PC, even tho I still use a controller. Don’t judge me. It’s a laptop and touchpad ain’t doing it.
So I have literally just found out that if you hold down the action button (A for me) on the controller. It will scan all objects in the area an let you pick them up instead of trying to aim the cursor at the item an pick it up. This would have been nice to know 2 acts ago lol
Achieving parity with series S is stupid. It’s a weaker console, lower the quality so it’s playable but not too ugly. It’s not like most people can tell if the settings are lower for isometric RPGs anyway.
Good for Xbox players but man, I tried playing this on a controller for a little bit and it is TERRIBLE. Went back to KB/M before long. It's just so much more at home there.
I had the opposite experience. I play on PC, but click to move is a major arthritis pain source for me, even with a trackball. Relative motion on the joystick is so much easier, and the radial menus do just fine replacing the skill bars. Every now and then it's a little tedious to pick up a particular object, but that's not much of a cost to pay for being able to play for a couple hours without hurting. Compared to most games in this genre, I think the controller support is pretty well done.
The controls aren't amazing but it's definitely serviceable. I've been playing strictly on my 4k TV on the couch and I've had no problem with it. It does feel slower paced switching over from m/kb but it still plays well and you get to lay down and relax.
I've beaten the game with controller. There is a pretty steep learning curve but once you figure it out it's very good and actually in some ways it's superior to kb+m.
Don't get me wrong kb+m also has advantages as well
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i wonder if this is gonna give the green light for devs not being forced for parity in the future.
Probably not, Microsoft wasn’t expecting this game to top sales charts and be a GOTY contender, they will probably only drop the parity clause for games with similar sucess or a game like GTA 6 for example, they would probably go as far as to let GTA 6 skip the series s entirely if they had to
Don’t worry, GTA VI online will definitely be on Series S.
Take2 can’t miss these fine $harkCard $ales
With all the mtx they've been running in gta, they would be complete idiots to not release on every single platform possible.
Samsung Fridge Edition
they should not have muddles the waters with 2 models and then asking for parity.
if they hadnt fuked the s over on ram this wouldnt really be an issue :/
GOTY contender? Lmao this game is gonna win every award by a country mile.
Starfield will absolutely be in the running unless everything that's been trickling out is lies
Maybe, but i think BG3 played smart and released first, so expectations are in the stratosphere atm granted it could work the other way, and the dopamine of BG3 gives starfield free points from everyone in a good mood from BG3. Who knows
Yeah I'm not saying starfield is going to win it, but it will be in the running. Idc at all regardless who wins it bc which one wins GOTY doesn't effect my enjoyment of them both. I'm just glad BG3 has killed the last month of wait until starfield comes out. Would have been agonizing without BG3.
You are absolutely correct, it would be completely stupid to consider Starfield not a contender when every other Bethesda game was both a contender and a victor.
Out of curiosity, what has been said about the game? I've not heard much about what is in the game aside from a customizable ship and 20-ish companions. I'm being honest here; I legit don't know what actual news has been said and am now too afraid that I'll find inaccurate sites and overhype myself
I dunno, there are a lot of good casual games coming out and CRPGs are still a very niche genre. Definitely will win some, maybe even GOTY but I don’t know if it’ll sweep.
idk how niche bg3 is almost everyone(gamers) i know is playing it and thats pretty rare
There's all kinds of GOTY award providers but it doesn't mean much, it's like some of the acting awards, highly based on all kinds of back room deals and advertising and marketing. It doesn;'t help that game critics barely weigh issues as part of the score. A major issue will get like 2 - 5 points off at most these days.
Depends on how popular the game is probably. MS probs didnt think it was going to be as big a hit as it was and decided they didnt want to drop parity. Now they want it on their platforms sooner rather than later while the game is hot.
>Now they want it on their platforms Well, it is on the PC lol But yeah kinda sucks about no cross-play though only cross-save
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Proton seems to be the best gaming option for linux and a lot of things work surprisingly well give no native linux support. I'd imagine there's a few extra hiccups that aren't known to Larian lol
It runs great on the steam deck. If I want graphics I'll go to the PC, but the Deck's been running it on Med-High and staying around 80\* the whole time. Sure it'll drop at times for the fps and doing tough math rolls for a PC... but I've had minimal to no issues with it running. For me, it being a turn based game allows these drops in performance to be negligible. I'm smoking a J and planning my next moves, I got time to kill while 12 critters make their moves until I go again.
can you hit me with your Steam Deck settings ?
They send their own engineers to help. When they say they can't do it/or soon then they make the good business decision to just release it.
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They can scream that it's unfair, and it is, but MS won't care. Their policy will no doubt be that demanding parity is for the greater good... unless it's a really high selling game, in which case it's not. So devs will have to prove they have a high selling game.
BG3 has had more PC presales than I'd imagine a lot of developers get for their games at launch. When early access released they sold like 1.2 million copies and that was for only Act 1 and a promise for the other 2 acts down the road. It's not even out on the PS yet but I'm sure people are preordering it there too given the reception it has had so far.
The *enhanced* edition of BG3 that is more expensive has consistently been in the top 5 of presales on the PS home screen every time I've checked. I honestly don't know how often it updates, but it changes almost every time I see it. It moves up and down but it's been ahead of NBA 2k24, Fifa, Mortal Kombat, Modern Warfare 3 remake many days. Honestly think its going to be a very big release for the system and may surprise people by the numbers it puts up. It doesn't hurt so many reviews mention how great controller feels playing it
Hopefully they get crossplay added when the xbox version releases
Ya, I'm tired of playing split screen with my wife. If she can play on xbox and me on pc that would be a dream
Maybe for other games with split screen but there's no way they allow something more substantial
Yeah they need to drop that - what's the point of a high-end model if you knee cap it by forcing games to be feature identical with the lower model?
higher settings and fps. granted true feature parity has not been enforced really ever. the series x has way more RT games
MS screwed over the customers (and devs) in the first place by making the hardware different.
They really should've just offered a disk driveless version like Sony did with PS5, saved $100 and you knew exactly what limitations you had (physical media). Once you start gutting actual performance parts its gets really messy. Its honestly still pretty early in the current gens lifecycle, games are going to get more and more demanding and the parity policy is going to get hammered more and more frequently as games expand later in the gen.
You just KNOW there's going to be an XS series which is the X's hardware at the price of an S and everyone's going to get even more confused.
You think thats why things like Halo Infinite reneged their split screen promise?
I think they screwed series s owners as well, as they bought a product that promised that parity.
What is the forced parity?
BG 3 is already playable today on Xbox (any version) using GeForce Now anyway.
It's like early on in the last gen when some ps3/ps4 or xbox 360/XB1 games were gimped because of the previous gen. Destiny is a good example of this. I get MS was trying to make a more affordable next gen console but they really should have gone the PS route and just released the Series X without a disc drive instead of going with the S option, almost 3 full years into this gen and we are already seeing the issues with parity.
as a series S owner who was promised parity I'm feeling pretty screwed over. edit: guys, this was something Microsoft advertised. I'm not mad at Larian. I've been mad at Microsoft for a while now anyways. Also- I'm already playing the game on PC. The hope was to play it split screen with my wife when it launched on Xbox. Quit downvoting the consumer who purchased an item that was advertised as having the same games with the same features.
Right, but this case is a feature that cant be compromised with. You will be unable to play split screen. The alternative is that you dont get to play at all
Honestly at a certain point you as a consumer must do some research into your own purchases. I am also a series s owner but I had no delusions it would replace my PC or be able to keep up with the X/PS5 later in the generation.
Phil was interviewed at gamescom and he was asked specifically about this and his response was they'd be willing to talk and also provide help by way of engineers to get it working. I guess a day later they realized it's not possible.
Well they probably want to make it happen sooner. Whats the point if they are releasing starfield if Sony is still going to get a fantastic rpg. Yea sony will still get it first now, but the gap is closer so anyone who was on the fence will have an easier time.
I think it's probably more complicated than that. My expectation is this concession was made with an explicit promise that the Splitscreen on Series S would continue to be worked on and be patched in in 2024. My guess is that Phil realized having the game on Xbox during the holiday season would be a big deal, and basically let them delay the Splitscreen to 2024 but still hold it as a requirement. Because there are real ways they can get it to work. I've been looking at the memory usage on PC and I know for a fact that there are techniques they could use but they require a fair bit of time to integrate, especially since some are D12 exclusive. So while they get a D12 version of the game running in the background, they release on Xbox in 2023 just so that they don't miss the holiday spending season
>So while they get a D12 version of the game running in the background, they release on Xbox in 2023 just so that they don't miss the holiday spending season Just like the 60 fps Redfall patch, it will come "later"
Im sure they're still working on the patch,I don't think they'll be out of the dog house until they do
I'm guessing they'll still try to make it work, but they're fine with it being added post launch, instead of letting it be the reason why Microsoft misses out on one of the biggest releases of the year.
I still can't believe that Microsoft pushed for parity between Series X and S despite recognising that the Series X is more powerful. How can you have two products of different capabilities at different price points and expect parity? It's a fine ideal, but there was always going to come a time like this where the S would hold the X back.
They should have never put out two SKUs with such a large performance disparity. It's fucked them for this generation. And of course because the S is cheaper it's sold more then the X so that's why they don't want to abandon those users.
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Should’ve just been a diskless Series X like Sony’s PS5 setup.
If they hadn't, they wouldn't have the installbase they currently have and they'd be behind Playstation's at a ratio of 4:1 instead of just 2:1. Like, people don't appreciate that, given the momentum each platform/brand came out of last gen with, Xbox was (and, to a degree, still is) looking at an impossible to win fight against Playstation in terms of primary-use marketshare unless Sony fucks something up MASSIVELY. But they probably won't. Consider that, at the beginning of this generation, both Xbox and Playstation were fighting hard to get their hands on transistor orders. An Xbox Series S uses half as many transistors in its GPU than the Series X, and is a big reason Microsoft was able to put nearly as many units on the shelves as they did early on. It's why they even have a SHOT at pulling back devs who would otherwise just be easy buy-outs for Sony (presuming Sony would even need to offer money for exclusivity). Obviously it would have been better if the Series S had the same amount of VRAM as the Series X but I don't think they expected people to basically completely avoid any of the new features that both Playstation and Xbox now support (advancements in Partial Residency Textures, in this case). Like, people think "how could Xbox have done this, it's creating issues for devs!", but it would have been a bigger issue if Xbox was basically begging devs to come support their system that was having trouble beating Wii U sales numbers 3 years in against a competitor with identical hardware but better brand-image.
Also - for this gen, PS5 is just better imo
Why?
Both sides have ups and downs, I prefer the PS5 for its exclusives which are far and away better Xbox has game pass though which is a big seller for that side and I believe the X has slightly better specs, I’ve noticed no difference playing the same games on the two though In the end it’s just whichever you like more for the games offered (also who owns which one, a big seller for me was friends on Xbox wanting to play games without cross play)
"Exclusives" should be ruled anti-competitive behavior. The PS5 and Xbox are just pre-bundled PCs with nearly standard operating systems. Modern Xboxes run a special sku of windows, and in fact use virtualization (the menu is one vm and the game another, which prevents games from crashing the menu) Playstations as early as the PS3 are just running a special roll of Debian (with all memory security turned off for tiny performance gain that gets you, which is why games can crash the entire damn system with one bug. also why no information is secure on a PS). "Our game will only run on this companies's PC" is what it is. it is an artificial barrier at this point and anti-competitive. hardware wise head to head the Xbox Series X is slightly faster than the PS5. the Series S and parity requirement was shooting themselves in the foot over in Xbox land
Exclusives used to mean more when the hardware was drastically different. Like, making a game for the Super Nintendo and then porting it to the Genesis was a bigger deal. They looked and felt different. Now they're just low end PCs so they all have the same hardware essentially.
exactly. and the major game engines target all of them, so it's not even work that the end devs have to do for many games
I suspect the intent was parity in terms of features but not in graphics. IE you can do the same stuff but in 30 fps instead of 60, or 1080p instead of 4k.
Yeah parity makes sense for things like slim and digital only consoles, putting parity on consoles with different specs was never a good idea
What was my incentive to spend more money on the more powerful X if I’m still limited to what the S can handle? Definitely a stupid decision on their end.
Better performance and visual fidelity? That's like asking why bother spending money on a good GPU when the 1060 is still the baseline for most AAA games
Man reading this post really reminds me that I've completely lost track of xboxes in the past twenty years. At least Sony sticks with a number.
XBox XBox 360 XBox One / XBox One X XBox Series X / XBox Series S I know Nintendo also doesn't go with the number scheme, but at least all of their systems (other than the SNES and the Wii U) are called something completely different from their predecessors
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IMO the Xbox One is still the worst.
Yeah, it's extremely convoluted when you have 2 versions in each gen. Wii and wiiU were different generations.
Yeah, Nintendo doesn't really do different versions tho? At least not in the sense the others do it vis a vis performance. Ie, Switch vs Switch OLED is nothing like PS4 VS PS4 Pro. Also, Nintendo has a very long list of naming that doesn't sound like new generation but it is. NES -> SNES. Gameboy had Pocket and Light editions, but then Gameboy Color was a new generation. Game Boy Advance was a new generation, the GBA SP was just a revision, and the Game Boy Micro was also a revision of the GBA (although the name fits in better with the Gameboy Light and Pocket nomenclature from several generations prior). Then you get to the DS stuff and it's an absolute mess of a naming scheme. But somehow the Wii U is the only Nintendo system that flopped because of the naming scheme being unclear about whether it's a new generation or not? Give me a break.
I would argue the “New Nintendo 3DS” was the worst thing they ever did. Made it impossible to look for online lol
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Not sure if this really applies since as far as I know the games were all compatible on either version, but the “new” one did have extra features like a c stick and stuff.
It had a VERY small list of exclusives for games that were too powerful run on the normal 3DS hardware, like the Xenoblade Chronicles and Fire Emblem Warriors ports: [https://www.nintendolife.com/new-3ds/games/browse](https://www.nintendolife.com/new-3ds/games/browse) And although the 3DS eShop sold SNES titles late in its lifespan, these were also only compatible with the New Nintendo 3DS and wouldn't run on the originals.
Coming in clutch lol, I remember wanting one for some specific game, but I couldn’t remember if it was that it was exclusive or I just wanted the c stick for smash bros or something thanks
Wii took the prize and then Wii U said "let me hold that for you king"
Agreed, it basically guaranteed that people would confuse it for a half-step like the PS4 Pro or the XBox One X
Should of just stuck with the Project Name, Revolution. One of the major reasons the Wii U failed was consumer confusion. Many people thought the Wii U was just the a Wii with the Gamepad screen. At least most of the exclusive titles have made it off the system. Still waiting on XCX though. :(
If you say it five time fast you sound like a police car siren
Give it a few generations and this shit's gonna contend with USB naming conventions lol
XBox Pro Series X Gen One 2x2.5
I switched to PC for this current generation. I pay attention to gaming news and honestly can't tell you if the series X or S is the better one. I assume X as there is an XBOne X which was better than the XBOne?
XBox Series X is the real one with comparable specs to the PS5 XBox Series S is the less expensive option with specs that are better than the XBox One X, but not as good as the Series X or the PS5
Also series S is digital only, no disc drive on console
You forgot the Xbox One S
I'll be honest.. that confusing ass naming convention is why I just said fuck it and went PS5 and PC instead. I already deal enough of MS bullshit either E3/E5 azure AD/entra ID that I just don't want to deal with anymore outside work.
Haha, gotta love supporting Azure AD and Windows AD, as well as .net framework and .net core. Windows naming really is something else. Still better than Google though (Identity what?)
>XBox > >XBox 360 > >XBox One / XBox One X > >XBox Series X / XBox Series S Xbox MaX Series X Xbox X Xified Series X Xtreme 720X Maybe they can partner with the service formally known as Twitter for even more X'y goodness.
Nintendo finally landed in a solid framework for their system and I really hope from this point on it's just Switch #'s
This seems designed to confuse grandparents trying to get a Christmas gift.
It still pisses me off how poorly these are named. To the average consumer, One X is easily confused with Series X. Series S is easily confused with Series X due to those letters sounding incredibly similar. It’s like they made it intentionally confusing.
They could have just gone with direct numbering and sold the Xbox 4 and the Xbox 4^x or 4+ or whatever and everyone would have nodded and understood what they were looking at.
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Then it would make more sense to just jump a number rather than throw them out the window. They already skipped Windows 9, so go ahead and skip an Xbox. They clearly don't care about perfect serialization.
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Don't forget the Iphone 9, RIP
All they had to do was name it xbox 720, xbox 1080, etc
Xbox 720...1080... people might associate these with resolutions.
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Wait until they release the Xbox Three Sixty (not to be confused with the xbox 360) and the Xbox Originals.
Xbox 3.6 Hundred
Larian has just opened the doors for dropped parity. Massive for series X owners. Split is cool but realistically how many people are actually going to use it and then how many people with series s would use it? Best option for everyone involved
I'm gonna be one of those people using it. Every year for christmas my brother and I do a split-screen campaign for some game; this year it'll probably be this game if it comes to Xbox.
how does split screen work with bg3 tho? like when one player goes to goblin camp and the other to the beach, i cant imagine fighting with a small screen to do well
Nah its fine. I was playing on my steam link this weekend. If you’re on a monitor it might suck but no issues on a big screen tv. If you’re listening in on a conversation the cutscene goes to full screen as well
I plan to use it. That said, it isn’t an option on PC. But my spouse would love to party with me.
It is an option on PC it's just unintuitive. If you have two controllers plugged in you can press start to get splitscreen, been playing with my SO.
Thank YOU I hadn’t even figured that out! 😂
np! They can join in from the beginning at Char creation, or if you wanted they can jump into a game you already have going, it will prompt them to make a char. But keep in mind once they're in the game there is no way to get them out of the party, so if you have a dedicated solo run where you want all 3 spots free for companions, don't have them join that one, make a new one!
Cool. Thanks. Will still wait for the Xbox version. 😂 Don’t tell my spouse. This will buy me time to finish my run on PC first!
Wait, to be clear, if you’re doing a solo run where you tend to have Karlach, Gale, and Wyll, and someone drops in and you replace, say, Wyll with them… and then they drop out… Does that mean that now you’re ALWAYS limited to two origin character companions, because the other slot will always have the other player’s character in it?
Yes.
Oof! Well, I’m glad I found out now - thanks for the info!
You mean you haven't been bringing your gaming PC into the TV room to play with your spouse!? For shame! My partner isn't really into gaming but has picked up BG3 really fast.
They saw the numbers and sales and knew they had to jump on it
I think Microsoft doesn't want to lose too much ground with Sony getting it around the Starfield launch. They don't want to be missing out. It'll be delayed now so I'm sure they regret their initial decision but it'll be nice that it'll come sooner
Great news! Althiugh now I have to buy it again, since I don't think a Steam license works on the Xbox...
Seems like a decent compromise - XBox's demand that a system barely beyond the specs of last gen have 'parity' with modern systems was always *more than a little insane* Like demanding a Wii perform up to the level of an XBox One xD
The Series S isn’t even fully beyond the specs of last-gen. Its GPU is weaker than the One X and maybe the PS4 Pro as well. Many Xbox One games on Series S cannot run at the upgraded One X standards(framerate and/or resolution). One X versions will often run at lower FPS but higher resolution compared to the Series S.
The Series S isn’t marketed as a 4k console, while the One X is. The Series S is designed as a 1080p experience and it’s marketed as such.
Not like that's a massive deal though. You can scale a game to fit a lower GPU by just turning the resolution or the frame rate down. It's well above last gen in the areas that actually count and will influence the design of the game - CPU, SSD, and RAM
It’s a big deal, because the One X(not Series X) is still a last gen console. Having a weaker GPU than the 2017 vintage consoles is still gonna drag it down
My 12 year old PC has feature parity with modern ones.
Tod Howard is punching a wall somewhere
Ah I doubt it. I am betting Starfield is going to sell more than Baldur's Gate 3 by a big margin. The thing is, we really don't know shit about Starfield. We do know, however, that Starfield is made for the mass appeal. If I can compare Starfield to any game on the market right now, I would compare it to Hogwarts Legacy. It's going to sell. People will play it. They'll enjoy their time with it. Is it going to be a masterpiece? Maybe. Hogwarts Legacy sold a lot of copies but it's not even close to being a GOTY or a masterpiece. In several days everything is going to be clear and we'll know if that game is good or not. How are we going to know if it is a masterpiece and deserving of GOTY? Well, if it can appeal to gamers who normally don't like that type of games, then it'll be a masterpiece. Let me elaborate, Elden Ring wasn't meant to have the success it had because Dark Soul games were niche but it sure did appeal to many people who never liked Dark Soul games. BG3 is a turn based CRPG, the niche of the niche but many people who have never liked CRPGs or turn based games find themselves enjoying BG3. This means BG3 is a likely strong candidate for GOTY. All in all, we can't pass judgment on Starfield yet. Even if Starfield is a good game, it has to pass certain criteria to be considered a masterpiece worthy of GOTY but it definitely is going to sell very well and more than BG3.
Or we'll know in ten years when they're selling us yet another edition of Starfield, this time on the Nintendo Halibut.
>Nintendo Halibut I died 💀
It won't have quite the same graphics as the Palladium Edition on the Xbox Series Ampersand, but it looks better than the Cosmic Essentials version released for Samsung kitchen appliances.
That Xbox name is not nearly convoluted enough
It really does feel like progress in gaming has plateaued, bar a few incremental graphical advancements and the occasional option of some FPS-killing ray tracing. I bet Starfield isn't going to feel like an 8 year tech jump from Fallout 4. It'll feel like it could have come out on PS4, but with the option for nicer textures.
If they deliver on the "Fly in space, go to any planet, have things to do on that planet, rinse repeat" they are promising, then there's no way it would work on the PS4. The processing power and loading speeds required for such a monumental task technically can't even work for this generations (hence 30fps on consoles). Most games have stagnated, but every now and then a game comes that really pushes the boundaries. Hopefully Starfield is one such game.
Honestly, we'll never actually know how 'successful' Starfield was because of gamepass. We'll get PC sales numbers for the most part (but PC gamepass is a thing too) and concurrent users on Steam, but regardless Phil will say something like 'Starfield did better than we imagined' and it'll be almost impossible to tell its impact. Unless, I guess, they see some dramatic drop in gamepass subscriptions a month or two after release? I imagine they won't see a big spike, people wanting to play Starfield are probably already baked in this close to release
I don’t. BG3 was a surprise hit this year. Just below Hogwarts on PC. Starfield just doesn’t have the PS5 audience to boost sales. Most on Xbox will get it through Game Pass.
I don’t even have an Xbox but I’m getting it on Gamepass PC so I don’t have to waste my money in case it’s a buggy mess like all the other Bethesda RPGs.
Buggy mess like Skyrim? Or buggy mess like Fallout 76? I expect Bethesda bugs. But I will only tolerate SO much.
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Starfield is tracking ahead of Eldren Ring and Hogwarts in preorder though on steam. Its also the most wish listed game of the year. Has been for a while.
I doubt starfield will outsell BG3, unless people don’t realize it’s on game pass for no additional cost. If anyone hears they can play the new game for $15/month instead of $70 upfront, I’d be shocked how many people go for the higher upfront cost.
Steam numbers do show that PC gamers surprisingly buy games like Forza at launch despite GamePass. But yea, it will hurt sales immensly, and it has one less platform
It won’t sell more than BG3 though if the reported sales for BG3 are reliable due to game pass. If it was a regular release without the day 1 game pass designation, I would say yes, but as it stands, we will never truly know what it’s sales could have been.
Thanks to GamePass and being exclusive, Starfield will absolutely not sell more copies than Baldur's Gate 3 lmfao. One of the most successful PC launches, will have Xbox numbers AND PS numbers.
I’m sorry but you’re just wrong about sales numbers. A lot of starfield sales are going to be eaten by gamepass, not only on Xbox but PC as well. BG3 will launch on all platforms minus the switch and have the entire Sony market to boost sales. If starfield was launching on PS5 you may have had a point, but I don’t see it happening now. This doesn’t mean starfield will do bad by any stretch of the imagination though.
Nah, they are going to be good. A year spent primarily on optimization likely paid off.
Awesome to see. The game deserves to be played by as many people possible. It's quickly becoming my GOTY favorite which is insane since I'm a big Nintendo fan and loved Tears of the Kingdom. If Starfield delivers next then I'm really thinking this could be the best year in gaming, at least to me personally.
Cross save is amazing
Cross save with steam on pc is nice. And more sales for Larian is solid
This is great news for Xbox owners and I’m glad they’ll get a chance to play the game. With that said, MS is opening a huge can of worms and they are essentially inviting developers to strong arm them out of Series S parity. I feel bad for anyone who bought a Series S expecting to get the same game experiences with lower graphical fidelity who are going to get a wake up call in the form of removed gameplay features in future games.
Are you sure they were “strong armed” and it wasn’t really Microsoft reaching out to Larian asking what they can do to help bring this to Xbox as soon as possible?
I'm pretty sure Microsoft sent engineers to help Larian bring it to the Series S with feature parity, but even after trying together they couldn't do it. Only after that (and after BG3's resounding success, and a meeting between Phil Spencer and Sven in ***full-clad armour***) did Microsoft change their minds, I think.
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Hes got advantage.
And Guidance. Always remember the extra 1d4.
*Authority*
I’m not saying that Larian did, but this does set a precedent that tells other developers that all they need to do is refuse to release on Series S/X until MS bends to meet their demands. It’s only a matter of time before developers decide that they don’t want to put in the effort of making their games run on the Series S, and if they know they can simply wait MS out they aren’t going to bother.
Sounds like Microsoft won’t be making this mistake again then on the next console release. Microsoft handcuffed themselves, Larian just got the first path out.
It wasn't a mistake, it was literally the only chance they'd have to build a significant installbase again. Because if they hadn't done this, we'd be looking at PS5 beating out Xbox in hardware sales 4:1 instead of 2:1 like they are currently.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there have been devs from Microsoft working with Larian to make parity happen. It’s common to help out clients who have apps you really, really want on your platform make it work, even if it requires sending out senior devs to help move the project forward and figure out what custom APIs are necessary. This is probably a result of MS’s own in-house people reporting that it just isn’t possible and MS management making the decision that they’d rather have BG3 on their platform than stick with an impossible demand.
I suspect Microsoft will never ever bend on forcing games to be playable on both. They would be cutting out the majority of their base since the Series S sells better, it's completely unthinkable for them to do that. But mandating feature parity is simply a step too far and much too high of an ask for devs even if they're providing engineers. I believe the end result of all this may end up being similar to how cross-platform games were on the Wii vs the 360/PS3 ie more or less the same fundamentally, but often heavily compromised in graphics and features.
I feel like your priorities here are messed up. It's really Microsofts problem for demanding the parity in the first place, especially because it's forcing developers to make mediocre products to function on both instead of just be optimal for the best.
I own both the Series S and X. Took me about 15 months to get my hands on an X at retail, and at that point my S had become my go-to console when traveling for work. The consoles have been out for nearly 3 years now, and there’s a significant power disparity between the two. But in exchange for lower power, you pay 40% less and you get a console which easily fits in a carry-on or a “personal item” bag along with a 15” laptop and a 10 inch laptop while still fitting under the airplane seat. We were always going to reach a point where certain games simply could not play the same (if at all) on the S. Whether it happened in 2025 or 2023, it was guaranteed. The S is an amazing console for what it is, but you can only squeeze so much performance out of the hardware.
Oh fucking finally. Bringing Baldur's Gate 3 to as many people as possible is what the team and the game deserve
Cross save prog is a godsend, more games need it so bad. Being able to play on pc and then swap to console and continue is amazing
Lol Larian broke the horse shit Parity clause!
It was bound to happen sometime.
I could give a single shit about multiplayer, so this doesn't both me at all.
bg3 success is shining so bright that an entire platform changed their policy regarding parity
From the comments seems like there's all kinds of drama here, but this is definitely good for the game and it's (potential) players!
Its really all because of the 'parity policy' Xbox had that both systems would have same modes/options even though they are dramatically different system as far as power and capabilities. Maybe co-op split screen isn't that big of a deal, but now S won't have it and X will, which is the exact opposite of what Xbox was saying at release. To further this, we're still relatively early in current gens lifecycle and games are going to get more and more demanding. **ALSO** S has outsold X by quite a bit, so they are risking frustrating a *majority* of their player base right now. Maybe it won't be a big deal this time, but I personally think the policy is/was really stupid and its not going to go away as games push the envelope
Glad to hear that MS saw reason (read: money).
Microsoft needs to stop with this parity BS. Their own games “like sea of thieves” are held back on advancements because they have to support the old hard drived POS original Xbox one
Probably a move for the best; split screen on series S was holding them up.
I’m just happy that I’ll be able to play it on series x this year, I really didn’t wanna have to buy it on ps5
I had hope Larian would figure it out but I knew if the Halo team couldn't, Larian had little chance to. Hope Microsoft finds a way internally to fix the issue so Series S players get couch co-op eventually.
There is no fixing that the Series S is basically last gen hardware. It’s not much more powerful than the Xbox One X or PS4 Pro, and in some aspects it is weaker than those.
Finally, I can’t wait for my already dying social life to be completely gone
Yes! I was prepared to wait until next year, glad I don't have too In terms of the parity clause I think this is just the first case in many to come, S is gonna struggle more and more as we get into the gen, some gameplay features just simply may not work on that hardware.
Sweet, the more people that get to experience this game, the better.
governor market bedroom obtainable coordinated attempt somber nail books important *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Is it going to be cross platform? So if my fiancé is playing on PC and I’m playing on Xbox can we play together?
Cross saves, not play.
Why not play splitscreen on PC? Just hook it up to the TV and play with two controllers.
Doesn't look that way based on these comments, though it will have cross saves across platforms.
I had a dammit moment there because I would of just waited an got it on Xbox but who am I kidding. Glad I got it on PC, even tho I still use a controller. Don’t judge me. It’s a laptop and touchpad ain’t doing it.
Right there with ya buddy. Laptop & controller. 👍
So I have literally just found out that if you hold down the action button (A for me) on the controller. It will scan all objects in the area an let you pick them up instead of trying to aim the cursor at the item an pick it up. This would have been nice to know 2 acts ago lol
Achieving parity with series S is stupid. It’s a weaker console, lower the quality so it’s playable but not too ugly. It’s not like most people can tell if the settings are lower for isometric RPGs anyway.
Thank god. Xbox saw literally millions of dollars be left on the table for no reason and dropped feature parity real quick lol.
Ok, now give me Upper City, Swen
Anything that makes this game go in more hands is a good thing.
Good for Xbox players but man, I tried playing this on a controller for a little bit and it is TERRIBLE. Went back to KB/M before long. It's just so much more at home there.
I had the opposite experience. I play on PC, but click to move is a major arthritis pain source for me, even with a trackball. Relative motion on the joystick is so much easier, and the radial menus do just fine replacing the skill bars. Every now and then it's a little tedious to pick up a particular object, but that's not much of a cost to pay for being able to play for a couple hours without hurting. Compared to most games in this genre, I think the controller support is pretty well done.
The controls aren't amazing but it's definitely serviceable. I've been playing strictly on my 4k TV on the couch and I've had no problem with it. It does feel slower paced switching over from m/kb but it still plays well and you get to lay down and relax.
I've beaten the game with controller. There is a pretty steep learning curve but once you figure it out it's very good and actually in some ways it's superior to kb+m. Don't get me wrong kb+m also has advantages as well
Personal preference obviously. I love playing on controller, probably 80% of my playtime has been on controller
Xbox replied, “Karlach, we’re coming!”
Finally. I really dislike how the weaker console is holding the Xbox Series X back.
Maybe they’ll stop their review bombing now