Phil Spencer pulled some strings to help get the game out this year.

Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian Studios announce that they have found a way to bring Baldur's Gate 3 to Xbox Series X|S this year. This news came after Larian founder Swen Vincke had a meeting with Xbox's head honcho Phil Spencer.

Vincke says that after the meeting with Spencer they have "found a solution that allows us to bring Baldur's Gate 3 to Xbox players this year." Remember that the last we knew, Baldur's Gate 3 probably wasn't going to come to Xbox until some time in 2024. This was due to Larian having difficulty getting the game's split-screen functionality to work adequately on the less powerful Xbox Series S hardware.

Vincke now says that following his conversation with Spencer, they are allowed to include split-screen on the Xbox Series X while not having it included in the Xbox Series S version. Vincke also says that despite this change, all of the fixes and improvements made to the game thus far will be included in all Xbox versions. Additionally, there will be cross-save progression between the Steam and Xbox versions.

This is a major departure for Microsoft as they have, up until now, mandated that there must be feature parity between Series X and Series S versions of games. Larian could have released Baldur's Gate 3 without split-screen on both Series X and S but that would mean all Xbox versions were inferior to the PlayStation 5 version.

This now also begs the question: Will more of these types of concessions be made for more Xbox titles going forward?

While a 2023 release is looking very promising now, exact release dates for the Xbox versions have not yet been announced. Baldur's Gate 3 has been out on PC since earlier in August and is coming to PlayStation 5 on September 6.