Phil Spencer Insists Games Launch Across Xbox Series X and S Despite Baldur's Gate 3 No-Show - IGN
Phil Spencer Insists Games Launch Across Xbox Series X and S Despite Baldur's Gate 3 No-Show - IGN
Xbox boss Phil Spencer has addressed the fact Baldur's Gate 3 launches on PS5 before Xbox Series X and S in an interview at gamescom 2023.
Xbox boss Phil Spencer has addressed the fact Baldur's Gate 3 launches on PS5 before Xbox Series X and S in an interview at gamescom 2023.
Do they have any other option than to stick to their guns on this one? That's sold the XBox Series S as having feature parity with the Series X. If they go against that now, then they've engaged in false advertising and will immediately get slapped with a huge lawsuit and/or fine, plus all the negative PR that comes from it.
They're stuck until the next console generation, which is a long way out. And I wonder if PS5 will continue to gain ground against XBox for the rest of the generation as a result.
It will be interesting to see if they continue with their two-model tiering next gen, but I'm guessing they won't.
41I feel like developers have completely given up on optimizing games. Any game should be able to run on the SS. Most games can run on last gen consoles
27Most of time, it's the juggle of time and resource available to you, but there is still a hard limit otherwise how about demand BG3 to also run on my antique knockoff NES? Cause they are too lazy to accommodate the hardware limitation? How about my smart watch? Or someone else's smart fridge?
Don't get me wrong, what you said in some cases but most likely the devs are told to push it out instead of make the game run better(on the target platforms.) There are no secret sauce to otherwise fit a game like BG3 to previous gen consoles.
Last, if you are really good at this optimization thing the whole industry will pay good money for your skill set.
14Having just looked up the equivalent PC specs, it really doesn’t seem like a lot of power.
I imagine the game can run “fine”, but they probably need to do a fair bit of optimisation or people will complain about the way it looks and frame rate.
One of the benefits consoles used to have was everyone running the same hardware, but they’ve lost that now and I don’t imagine console players will be as accepting of lower quality as PC players with low end GPUs.
6It's just a business decision. Enough players have strong enough hardware that the invest into optimizing for weaker hardware isn't likely to pay off.
If there is a weaker platform with lots of players, like the Switch, that can make optimizing financially viable, but obviously, it depends on how much optimizing you would have to do...
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The Series S will become an ever bigger anchor going forward. Eventually, there will be 3rd party games that just choose not to bother with the Xbox at all because of the Series S.
18We’re only a few years into the new console generation and problems are also starting. It’s definitely going to get worse as more demanding games start coming out. Microsoft is really going to have to loosen their parity policy, or it’s going to hold either the entire generation back or them back.
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If they go against that now, then they’ve engaged in false advertising and will immediately get slapped with a huge lawsuit and/or fine,
No they won't. Companies aren't beholden to their commitments from advertisements in perpetuity. In the first place, someone would need to sue, or begin a class action. That'd drag out for years, and almost certainly lose.
9They can change course on advertised usage if they can argue that they had a genuine intention for longevity and only changed course after.
5They’re stuck until the next console generation
Since these Xbox consoles came out, maybe even since Xbox One X, they've been talking about being "beyond generations". I figured that would result in more periodic updates, probably with two simultaneous lines of Xboxes, X and S, but it hasn't turned out that way. So far, it's just seemed to mean that you don't have to deal with Sony's BS around PS4 and PS5 versions of the same game.
2They should've figured out a way to communicate that the Series S will last until next gen, but the Series X would get more cross-gen games when next gen launches
Or they should've known that RAM is hard to scale on and they could've included an extra 2GB or so in the Series S lol
But I'm actually a believer that BG3 could be made to run on XSS even with split screen, it's just gonna take more work and reduced graphics maybe audio quality too, and smarter data streaming from the SSD
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Me when it launched: this is a terrible idea and will hold Xbox back
Xbox fans: nuh uhhhh! It's brilliant!
3Thing is, it could be a good idea if they didn’t have such strict parity rules - play the game, but not necessity with the exact same features (ie, disabling split screen, but still allowing co-op). Heck, that could even have been a selling point to get people to “upgrade” to an X.
8They pitched parity in the beginning which is what I based what I thoughts on, 100% agree with you on that. Even if the dropped the expectations on how well it's supposed to run.... Drop it to a 720p console
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You know how the Sega Saturn had a four meg RAM cart? There's your solution! Sell a four GIG RAM cart for the Xbox Series S! Maybe it'd have a connector on the other end for storage cartridges. You know, make your own little tower of power.
(Honestly, I get the impression that after all this complaining, a Switch version of Baldur's Gate 3 will mysteriously materialize. So much for your talking point, Larian!)
2I seem to recall Xbox making claims they wanted this console generation to be "the last" because they wanted to make frequent iterative upgrades instead. I feel like they changed to the opposite mentality now, if the lowest common denominator can't handle it, nobody gets to play.
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