this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023

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Phil Spencer Insists Games Launch Across Xbox Series X and S Despite Baldur's Gate 3 No-Show - IGN (www.ign.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 years ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I 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

[–] PenguinTD 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Most 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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

How about my smart watch? Or […] smart fridge?

Well it worked for Skyrim? They released that for my niece’s speak and spell.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

From what they've said the game can run fine, but the issue is getting local split screen on the S working because it has such a small amount of RAM available

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

Yep. The Series S gives games even less RAM than the One X did.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

It'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...

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

We’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.

[–] ram 9 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

They can change course on advertised usage if they can argue that they had a genuine intention for longevity and only changed course after.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They’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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

They 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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

They really should have. It’s got 2Gb less than the One, which is where all these problems are coming from.

And as for getting BG3 running on the S, well, Microsoft has had to send out some of their engineers to help Larian figure out how to do it, so I doubt it’s going to be an easy job.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Me when it launched: this is a terrible idea and will hold Xbox back

Xbox fans: nuh uhhhh! It's brilliant!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Thing 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

They 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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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!)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I 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.