Lack of Baldur's Gate 3 on Xbox Hurts; Fans Discuss Point of Supporting Xbox Series S
Should the Xbox Series S limit its more powerful counterpart? The delay of Baldur's Gate 3's release on Microsoft's consoles has led fans to debate.
PC gamers have been enjoying the adventure in Baldur's Gate 3 for more than a week now. Soon, on September 6, they will be joined by owners of PlayStation 5 consoles. And what about Xboxes?
It is known that the developers are working on a version for XSX and XSS, however. the hardware limitations of Microsoft's cheaper console effectively tie the hands of Larian Studios - one of the pressing issues is the implementation of split-screen co-op.
This lag behind the PlayStation has laid the groundwork for a debate over the equivalence of the Series X and Series S Xboxes. Gamers would welcome "disconnect" between the more powerful XSX and its weaker brother, which causes more problems the further we delve into the current generation of consoles.
Xbox Series S must go?
On X (former Twitter), a discussion on this topic heated up after an article by Paul Tassie, which appeared in Forbes. The journalist threw out the thesis that through the necessity of the technological lacking of the Series S, PlayStation is leaving Microsoft's consoles behind.
The post gained considerable popularity, and gamers expressed their opinions in responses:
"So they're literally forcing developers to downgrade games earlier, even affecting their more advanced console and PC releases.
I still say it: the Series S was a mistake from day one. They should have made Series X without the drive," wrote user Alex Corvis.
"The goal of the Series S was to regain some of the market share they [Microsoft - ed.] lost in the XOne era. Currently, the Series S/X are selling worse than XOne at launch. All the S Series has done is deprive X owners of features and delay games for that platform," wrote user GamingFirefighter.
Not just Baldur's Gate
In addition to the delay of Baldur's Gate 3, the Xbox S Series has been pointed to as the culprit of Starfield running at only 30 frames per second on both Microsoft consoles.
It is likely that it was the problems with the "S" that were the reason that Forza Motorsport will lack a split-screen option on launch. It seems that the problems are just beginning to pile up before Microsoft's consoles.
What is Microsoft to do in this situation? As reported by acclaimed journalist Jez Corden from Windows Central, the company has three options:
- ignore the issue, hoping to Baldur's Gate 3 is just an unfortunate exception,
- prepare better tools and systems for developers to help customize games for the Xbox Series S,
- abandon the equivalence of Series X and Series S, at least in terms of split-screen games.
Whichever solution is chosen, Microsoft console owners will certainly be on the lookout for it, especially since they still don't know how much longer they'll have to wait for Baldur's Gate 3.
