Jim Ryan willingly builds cooperative relationships with third-party game developers, which paves the way for those developers to develop PlayStation-only titles and add-ons. Many players believed that we would see the same situation with Baldur’s Gate 3, but it turns out that the devs made a straightforward decision this time around.
At yesterday’s State of Play event, Baldur’s Gate 3 was demonstrated, and in addition to the announcement of its release date, it also revealed that the game will be available for the PlayStation 5. It appears that this time around, we are witnessing a different situation; yet, some of those who were interested had the misconception that Sony had paid for exclusivity once again.
Swen Vincke, head of Larian Studios, responded to negative feedback from players and confirmed that his company has not decided on any exclusivity:
“Relax. We’re still not into exclusivity.“
Relax. We still aren’t playing the exclusivity game.
— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) February 24, 2023
Why is Baldur’s Gate 3 coming out officially only for the PlayStation 5 and the personal computer in this scenario? While Larian Studios is still a relatively small team that seems to desire to make a port within its scope, the creators first took care of generating a two-device version of the game.
Although the team did not attempt to secure funding from Sony, it is likely that the game will eventually be released on Xbox; nevertheless, for the time being, the developers should focus on improving the PS5 and PC editions.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the coders, faced with a finite number of options, were forced to pick and aim for the group that could potentially contain the most receivers.
Larian Studios’s game designers have issued a statement in which they underline the possibility that their game may be released on Xbox.
Even now, the developers are working on the next version of the game, but they have run across a problem:
“Xbox players, we’ve seen your questions about if/when you can expect Baldur’s Gate 3 to come to Xbox. We’ve been working on Baldur’s Gate 3 for Xbox for a while, but we’ve run into some technical issues – especially with split-screen co-op. We’re still working on an Xbox version of BG3, but we’re not confident enough to announce it yet. We don’t like to showcase something until we’re ready because we don’t want to give people hope until we’re sure we can do it.“