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If you closely followed Baldur's Gate 3 release and the PlayStation 5 exclusivity controversy, you probably recall that one of the reasons for leaving out Xbox platforms on launch was due to VRAM issues on Microsoft's smaller and cheaper console Xbox Series S.
Larian Studios revealed that they are struggling with performance issues on Series S in the split screen mode, which resulted in Microsoft giving Larian the green light to ship the game without this mode on Series S, even though their parity clause requires that both Series S and X must have the same content and game modes.
Since then, Larian have been working on additional optimisation for the Series S as they are gearing towards the official Xbox release later this year. Interestingly, during that process they've discovered more performance thanks to 34 per cent VRAM optimisation, which could make the game run better across all platforms.
Larian Studios' dev Swen Vincke revealed on social media X that he got some great news from the studios' engineers, who revealed that memory is well under control and that things that were holding the Xbox port back are seemingly fixed, meaning that the release is very close.
"Got a nice present from our engineers. Ensuring memory is well under control and having buffer for peaks was the main thing holding us back I think this will benefit all platforms too. Still some work left but very close now."
This pretty much means that Series S went from zero to hero as it ultimately helped the team find more performance to make the game run and play better, not only on Xbox but on other platforms too, including PC and potentially PlayStation 5.
Microsoft were always pretty adamant that Series S is more than capable of running the best-looking and most demanding games and that the developers need to start properly utilising the consoles' hardware and software features to find more performance.
Microsoft Gaming head Phil Spencer even commented on Baldur's Gate 3 development troubles on Xbox Series S, revealing that the game is not held back by the console or the parity clause. "There are features that ship on X and that do not ship on S, even from our own games," said Spencer and namedropped ray-tracing as one of those features.
All in all, we're glad that Bladur's Gate 3 is almost ready for launch on Xbox consoles as it's one of the best games of 2023 and everyone should get to at least try it on the platform they own. Baldur's Gate 3 still does not have an official release date for Xbox but Larian still expect to launch it by the end of the year.
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