Baldur’s Gate 3 Forced Their Hand

Baldur's Gate 3 is a game so large and so important that it's actually forced Microsoft to change a policy because if they don't well um yeah it's going to be pretty damn good for Sony this is fascinating so Phil Spencer has had a lot of people confused recently with his Gamescom comments about the Xbox series s the platform is being discussed a lot more and that's because of Baldur's Gate 3 and how the game still does not have an Xbox release date and the reason why is because they could not get Split Screen Co-op running correctly on the series s and for some context here's a statement that larion had originally given to IGN they said specifically we've been unable to get Split Screen Co-op working to the same standard on both series X and S which is a requirement for us to ship and that's basically the situation the back of the box features have got to be the same now this was clarified later that Xbox actually sent their technical group to work with larion on the post Early Access version of Baldur's Gate 3 to ensure stability ability but with that there was still no release date not when the PC build came out and now not when the PlayStation build is going to be releasing at the start of September and that as you can imagine is a problem for Phil Spencer but I'll tell you what's not a problem today sponsor ground news an app and website that puts power in your hands and with my link you'll get 30 off their Vantage plan ground is amazing they ingest over 50 000 news articles a day they organize it all by Story by outlet they break down how many sources are reporting in each topic along with political bias and even ownership which lets you quickly compare headlines and learn what's actually going on which is really helped by their automatic Story summary feature it's awesome as an example seeing how Activision Blizzard's recent concessions that they've basically had to do how those are being analyzed across dozens of Outlets from well across the spectrum is 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of a conspiracy here that like of course the console or people they always have their conspiracies but our conspiracy was that this was all to have de facto exclusivity on the PlayStation platform which of course isn't the case it's that there has to be back of the box feature parody between Series S and series X you're allowed to have different frame rates and resolutions and stuff but not core gameplay like you know features and ultimately this gave rise to a very long burning fire that the series at is a real problem for Microsoft and a problem for developers this is in spite of the console allegedly making up more than half of the current gen Xbox install base that to me is insane and it really speaks to the magnitude of the problem that Microsoft have got on their hands here imagine if a significant percentage of ps5s were on a version that was just way more abolic to develop for that would suck for developers it's like at the most extreme example Would Be Imagined to publish in PlayStation 5 you also had to be able to squeeze your game on a switch that would be hell for developers and this isn't as bad as that but it is bad here's a tweet from Alex uh Donaldson the absolute most common thing this Gamescom has been devs off the Record absolutely slating the series s it's great uh value little machine but developers despise it man Alex by the way owns RPG site and is this Alex by the way owns RPG site and is assistant editor vg247 so this is him doing press stuff if you're not aware usually for one or two days um at Gamescom it's basically trade it's not like there's not really customer things going on usually that's when you know I I would usually be there to try and get a publisher on board and I now don't need to do that which is pretty sweet but anyway a lot of developers you know talk to each other let's just say that and that means we're now in a situation where both developers and players are complaining that the series s is actually impacting video games thinking just about how much easier life would be if they simply didn't have to build equally for it because at the end of the day if everything has got to squeeze onto a series s that does put limitations on how far you can push a series X and this meant it was a little uh extra odd that Phil Spencer suggested that things didn't work that way in his interview because speaking to Eurogamer he told the site they had no plans to drop Series S as a requirement for developers right or as a platform for releases because it shouldn't be a problem this is what Phil said I don't see a world where we drop s in terms of parity I don't think you've heard from us or larion that this was about parity I think it's more the community that's talking about it there are features that ship on Ax today that do not ship an S even from our own games like Ray tracing that works on X it's not on S in certain games so for an S customer they spent roughly half what an ax customer but they understand it's not going to run the same way and this is weird because let's go back to that statement from larion specifically we've been unable to get Split Screen Co-op to work in the same standard which is a requirement for us to ship okay so what's going on because that does sound Phil awfully like some people talking about parity now Phil is suggesting that parity wasn't something developers had to have between uh you know the two different consoles in this generation so to try and get some clarity in this we just went to the Xbox publishing guidelines here is what we found xr-130 Xbox console families and generations and it covers the relevant part it says ensure that identical game modes are offered across console types within the generation it goes on to elaborate that this is a requirement between the S and the X if a game does not pass that it will fail all Xbox certification and it cannot release on the Xbox platform and per the changelog for that process the last change to xr130 was in 2020 so it certainly does seem fill like you do need parity between the S and the X for things like split screen modes of play and that's not been changed since uh you know the console launched which has led to this very fun Gaslight gatekeep girl boss uh image what a great image there we go go now that we've appreciated that the core thing here though is Phil isn't really in in this statement he's talking about Ray tracing now Ray tracing probably wouldn't fall under xr130 because xr130 is about identical game modes that's a mode of play such as the the co-op that larian were not able to get and they themselves said was a requirement to ship so this could be quite bad news for larion because xr130 doesn't appear to have changed unless however this would be bad news unless you've just found yourself to have made one of the most highly regarded games of the year and you could maybe leverage that fact as a bit of an exception especially when the incentives are kind of aligned for Spencer and Co to give you that exception so this seems to be what larian's CEOs has done they've actually got the co-op requirement to be dropped and they've added the ability for Xbox players to to actually cross save onto steam this is pretty crazy so here's what he tweeted super happy to confirm that after meeting Xbox P3 that is Phil Spencer we found a solution that allows us to bring Baldur's Gate 3 to Xbox players this year still something we've been working toward for quite some time all improvements will be there with Split Screen Co-op on series X Series S will not feature Split Screen Co-op but will include cross safe progression between Steam and Xbox series so yes this means there will be an Xbox release of Baldur's Gate 3 that does Target 2023 providing of course they can get that build ready on top of you know launching the PlayStation version and then staying on top of bug fixes for everything now this is likely some sort of thing that was in the works by the time that Phil gave his statement and so while it means that this is an exception to the norm being made for larion it does mean that his statements on parity are true as long as Xbox go and update those requirements and as long as larion acts as essentially the thin end of the wedge here because what's happened here right xr130 has not changed we went we went there and we checked it it's not changed and larian are violating xr130 there is not a game mode parity between versions yet they can ship and this this is quite weird because the next time a developer is going to walk up they're going to be like okay look we can't do this but Larry and got away with it can we forego this feature in the series s and be able to publish on your consoles Mr Microsoft so are Microsoft able to basically set this precedent and then say no to a developer or do they want the headline that actually it is you know there's one rule for a very successful game and another rule for everybody else and the answer there is no they don't but that is the case anyway and that's why Call of Duty has a 80 20 lit for Revenue there's yeah there's exceptions that have been made we're working on a story about Xbox and Bobby and uh you'll see that likely next week but overall this is pretty good news all around this means that Xbox Gamers get a great new game to play with Baldur's Gate 3 it means that Larry and get more sales for their fantastic game and it means that Xbox themselves bring their you know bring the game to their platform now of course console Gamers still get to go and and go completely insane and actually I'm going to implore you to read what is on screen I I don't want to I like I don't want to say it because uh you know the the Angry robot that watches all of us but um yeah come on this has got to be bait right this person seriously is not asking for like PlayStation Rosa Parks what's going on anyway anyway it's always fun to point and laugh at the console uh War people because there's so much Insanity uh that goes on and I think another point that I just want to throw into the mix here it does look bad right for Spencer and Co they are on the back foot with this generation make you know there's no no other way about it they have sold far fewer Xbox series consoles than PlayStation have have sold ps5s and that's even when they have a console that's like you know what half the price of a PS5 I think they were like 199 quid with a game and something like Black Friday bundle or something similar which is insane value for money yet still people are going to spend the extra you know 50 on the PlayStation the market has borne that truth out so for Spencer the idea then that uh Baldur's Gate 3 gets to functionally be a PlayStation exclusive at least in the period where it's getting most of its sales because the developer cannot pass xr130 in their you know in Microsoft's own publishing guidelines that's really rough because not only is it bad for like getting new people in you know not only is it saying this is a worse place place to go for a multi-platform release it's also making the people who are bought into the Xbox platform not as you know I was particularly happy before you accuse me of PlayStation bias I do actually have both and I use both fairly uh you know fairly regularly I do think they're really damn good bits of Kit and I also do think that like games Pass Plus a consoles actually a really good experience anyway with this we gotta think about the series s and what that could represent for gaming as a whole it's the budget console that Spencer talks about as ensuring the entry level of the generation this is especially as console you know price cuts and mid-generation upgrades don't seem to be something that they're targeting this time around as a result of increased cost requirements from their manufacturers that is actually something I think it was Spencer who said like that's one of those things he could say oh no we're not thinking about uh you know an upgrade console and maybe they are who knows um but uh you know they're they're at least not putting any uh you know public sort of hype or anything into that idea which I suppose you wouldn't themselves a product that people can buy because you don't want to say hey there's a big new thing coming that'll just make people not buy the series X and probably buy a PlayStation or just wait um but yeah it doesn't seem like things are moving in the way of the mid-generation refresh and think of it from Microsoft they would truly be in a loopy situation if they have a console that is significantly faster than a series X I don't know what do we call it the series XS the series Y the series z uh or just X who knows or the Xbox series X pro if you're gonna you know follow Apple call it the series X pro Max and it'll literally be a gaming console the size of a goddamn fridge um but anyway anyway how loopy would it be if they had a a series X pro and still developers had to squeeze their game onto an s that would be ridiculous and remember on the series s in terms of raw horsepower it's actually below the Xbox One X but of course architecturally you know performance per watts and all of those things like it is architecturally a lot more you know modern so it does get a lot of benefits uh from that but it firmly is like designed as the 1080p60 machine probably is going to mean 1080p 30. what's actually happening is we're getting simultaneously you know hey we can do ray tracing hey we can do 4K and all these great things PlayStation is embracing that while Microsoft is saying and it better scale back to this very weak console that obviously is going to lead to what Alex Donaldson found when he was talking to game developers and that is that they are slating the series s that absolutely is the case I'm not working on any you know Xbox game related stuff like we're not working that in the studio right now um but you know certainly moving your game from your lead platform onto another platform yeah that's that's a tricky experience um oh God how annoying um I suppose it's like on you know it's like on PC like with PC gaming the idea of like okay you you know you post your minimum requirements and you know that that's like a confident between you and your players and if you break that you'll get bad reviews and people won't buy your game but it's not like you cannot ship your game and PC unless it can run on um I don't know uh a 1080 right it doesn't work like that so that's just the sort of way that Developers for the Xbox platform are being held back and ultimately what larian did is they focused on PC and PlayStation and and uh they kind of stepped out an Xbox it's like they were shipping the game now it did make sense to wait for Xbox that is a weakness for Phil and it'll be fascinating to see how Microsoft actually navigates this space in the future but there you go I know the broad topic of Baldur's Gate 3 good um is something that you know we all enjoy in this case it is uh so good and so in demand that it has a allowed for the violation of XR 130 how dramatic okay that's it for today's video of course be sure to check out ground news they're an awesome I mean awesome platform awesome sponsor they help out the show um so you can check them out the link down below with that said though cheers for watching I'll see you next time

Channel: Bellular News

Views: 198,535

Keywords: larian, baldur's gate 3, baldur's gate, larian studios, aaa, baldurs gate 3 xbox, bellular, bellulargaming, bellular news, game industry, industry news, videogames, gaming news, game news

Id: TsnRIgD7-k8

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 27 2023