Larian has delayed the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, currently on pace to possibly be 2023’s Game of the Year, until they can figure out how to make split-screen work on Series S.
The Xbox Series S is a cheap lower-resolution Xbox, and the ports it gets are for that reason. The parity scales well for most games and reduces consumer confusion.
BG3 really isn’t all that demanding for a next gen open world game
Most games these days, regrettably, don’t bother with split-screen multiplayer, and definitely not with the worst-case scenarios of how far apart the two players can be in that world, which is their hurdle right now.
Parity here isn’t on a scale. It’s a binary trait. Either they are the same or one is worse than the other. The shitty XBOX does not have CPU parity with the real one, and it’s a serious limitation that effectively means that the “good” Xbox also has that worse CPU in terms of game design. It will obviously still get some games, but it’s losing games that it would otherwise get because it has nothing in common with a next gen system.
Split screen being the specific thing that BG3 is struggling to do isn’t the point. It’s merely a symptom. For a next gen open world game, split screen BG3 is still not that demanding. The fact that all the real action is turn based makes it far easier to make run than a similarly dense real time game with real time physics demands, and the fact that the Xbox S can’t handle it is a very strong example that it’s a piece of shit.
Microsoft wouldn’t have nearly the install base without the Series S, and developers can either target that platform or not, just like the Switch, because people bought it for its own strengths. If they want to scale their games up to a spec such that it runs on PlayStation but not Xbox, they’re welcome to, but they lose access to a large pool of customers, like those who can stomach paying $300 for a console but not $500. There are plenty of other next gen open world games that work on Xbox.
Also, your analysis on how it should perform isn’t really based in reality. We can go to interviews where the Swen Vincke calls out the way their game does split-screen specifically. And besides, at this point, Xbox engineers are involved, and BG3 will run on Xbox, though likely just next year.
It has no strengths, and the install base is shit.
The switch only gets away with being a last gen console because it’s a handheld. The Series S has all the performance benefits of a last gen console with the install base of one that released 5 minutes ago.
There is no “the way they do split screen”. BG3 while running split screen is not a game that should make a current gen console struggle in any way. It makes the S struggle because it’s not a current gen worth of hardware.
