Larian is having trouble fitting Baldur’s Gate III on the Xbox Series S, the lower-priced and lower-powered console in Microsoft’s ninth-generation lineup.
I was looking up more information on why there’s such an issue getting BG3 on Xbox, and found this article with a lot more detail on the topic.
EDIT: The issue isn’t graphics or frame rate; it’s memory. The article goes into detail.
I ran split screen with my wife last night with my 6700XT which I think is probably pretty close performance wise to a series s. It ran great at 1080p. I wonder if the advertised 1440p is the hold up?
Lowering the resolution for split screen on a AAA game seems like a reasonable enough sacrifice for me.
At 1440p my 6750XT is really chugging through power (~210W peak), but temps are staying low. It’s pretty interesting, but I prefer to limit the game to 75fps to save a bit on power.
Wait, there’s a split screen on Baldur’s Gate III? Normally I’d expect split screen games are for games with shorter gameplay loop, e.g. FPS, racing.
It’s kinda interesting that there’s a split screen couch co-op for a long sprawling RPG. Also doesn’t that make all the UIs and texts even more busy / cramped?
I just read that some people are trying out split screen. on steam deck, that’s wild.
Yeah, from what I understand Microsoft demanded 2 player co op splitscreen on one Xbox, which the ps5 can’t do either. The whole splitting the party up would be impossible and I bet they’d have to enforce close close proximity between pc characters to only render one environment at a time if they somehow pull it off going forward, and even then multi-zone on on xbox? which I think is unlikely as my 3 year old top end gaming rig barely gets 60 fps 2k ultrawide.
Anyone have any idea why Microsoft was so adamant about this?
Or is all that just bs and the Xbox can’t push it? All the peeps talking about the steam deck pushing it. Yes, but few are mentioning the settings @1280x720@30 fps all settings on minimum.
The problem with Xbox is that Larian couldn’t manage to make it work on Series S due to memory constraints. It takes a huge toll on memory if you allow two characters be on two parts of the map at the same time.
Microsoft wants Series S to be a cheaper 1080p option of Series X. Any game Series X can play should Series S also play with lower visual fidelity. This turns out to be a flawed dream by the looks of it.
I don’t think Microsoft will abandon this cheap 1080p console vision just because of one game, but they might need to if more games start to drop Xbox support due to this.
MS probably wants to make sure that Series S doesn’t end up missing out on games or getting subpar experiences, given they promised their customers that it’s the same as an X just at a lower resolution. You can see how they want to avoid outcomes like Series S being confined to lower player counts, smaller maps, or other game-restricting features.
But they’ve painted themselves into a corner in this case. Split screen requires rendering the whole game twice, which the S isn’t powerful enough to do. It’s also probably a feature few players will actually use.
Seems like this case should be an exception to the parity requirements.
Larian already did excellent split screen in D:OS2 (Maybe also in other games, no idea). The controller UI is very different from the M+K one and split screen is only available with controller input.
What I don’t understand is why they don’t just release both Xbox versions without split screen and then try to patch it in later. That way they’d satisfy the feature parity requirement (as I understand it) and people could at least play the game. I love that they’re still doing split screen despite it seemingly having fallen out of favour these days, but it’s hardly an essential feature.
True, but I feel like not releasing the game at all is even worse. The consensus seems to be that PS5 already has better exclusives and now you can’t even play one of this year’s best third party games on Xbox.
At least this way they can blame it on the S instead of just being the ganked version.
I remember when Mortal Kombat came out censored on the SNES and uncensored on the Genesis, not a technical limitation, but a policy limitation. Not a good look.
And “just being the ganked version” in this case would mean not having a single feature that the vast majority of players likely wouldn’t even have used in the first place. Yes, it’s not good, but the choice here is between either locking your players out of that one non-essential feature or locking them out of the entire game. And the second option is, to me, very obviously much worse.
And it’s also not like it would be the “bad” version forever. They can just patch it in when they get it to work. And let players decide for themselves whether they want to get the game now without split screen or wait.
They COULD blame it on the S, but, again, Microsoft won’t allow it.
I don’t get how blaming the S for a delayed feature would be different than blaming the S for a delayed game, which is what they’re doing right now.
But I definitely agree that this is bad for Microsoft and they should do something about it. Not sure whether dropping the S would be the right call but they definitely need to reconsider the feature parity requirement policy.
The S was just a bad idea from the get go. The Xbox One X introduced 4K gaming, 4K televisions are dirt cheap and the defacto standard now, why bother doing an under-powered 1440p machine? Even if you wanted a cheaper option, it doesn’t make sense coming out with a machine that belongs in the last generation, not the current one.
They should have gone the Sony route… Series X, Digital Series X. $499/$399.
If they wanted a $299 box, keep the One X alive for 1-2 more years then kill it. Still a better choice than the Series S.
Yeah for sure. I agree that pushing the One X as the cheaper/entry level version would have been much better. Even for much longer than 1-2 years. People wouldn’t get as mad if they gradually started to phase it out and stopped releasing the high profile games on it after a few years while still supporting it somewhat. Even the feature parity thing wouldn’t have been that much of an issue if they’d just clearly communicated an expiry date beforehand.
As far as I can tell the article only talks about a feature parity requirement between the Xbox Series S and Series X versions. And that could be met by just dropping the feature from both versions.
They may or may not have the requirement anymore, but they definitely used to have this parity clause as well. Then if it came to other platforms first and Xbox later, the Xbox version had to have bonus content beyond the original release.
I also thought they might have such a requirement but I was unable to find a source that confirms (or even mentions) it. Definitely still possible though.
they are not allowed to have one good version and a crippled version. they absolutely are legally allowed to just cripple both. “but the ps5 will have split screen!” well then, sucks to be you if you bought an xbox. think microsoft for that, sony consoles have nothing to do with it. or microsoft could just admit to themselves that expecting a next-gen game to run equally well on literally-worse-than-last-gen hardware is just a pipe dream.
It’s hard to communicate it to the consumer. Far from everybody follows this discourse surrounding the game. Maybe someone buys BG3 just for the split screen capability, just to disappointingly find out that the Xbox version doesn’t support it. Especially when they already have paid full price for the game.
That’s a good point, but I feel like there are reasonable solutions for that like a disclaimer when buying the game digitally. For the physical version they could either put a sticker on it or just delay the physical version only. I also think that people who are informed enough to know about specific features like that are more likely to hear about this discourse.
Don’t want to sound arrogant, but most people here (including OP and the writers of the article) don’t seam to know much about video game development.
Because statements like “… Isn’t about graphics or frame rate; it’s memory” don’t make sense at all.
Because if you fast memory is to small you would either more often read from a slower memory which results in less frame rate or you would need to make the stuff that fill up your memory (most often textures) smaller (lower resolution) which “reduces graphics”
The article says something more business politics related: “Microsoft requires all games to run, feature-complete and without changes in quality or mechanics” on both Versions S and X. I’m not really believe this to be true because this would make the existence of more powerful X version completely pointless. However what I think can be the case is that Microsoft QA is forcing the studio to adapt the game for the series S before it could be published. This needs time. Since there is no low spec version for the PS5 there is no need for additional adaptations.
Microsoft is OK with the S having a lower resolution and frame rate, that’s why it exists.
They aren’t OK with the X having a feature that the S does not, and that’s what’s blocking Baldur’s Gate 3. Split screen is possible on the X, it’s not (currently) possible on the S, that’s what they’re working on.
Removing split screen from both isn’t an option because the PS5 version supports it. The Xbox version would get murdered if they do it.
The reason why split screen doesn’t work on the S is, yes, due to the available memory. At it’s best, it has 8GB that runs 1/2 the speed of the X, + another 2GB that are so slow as to be essentially useless for gaming.
What could split screen bring that it will not work with the S memory? Because one object will not take up twice the space just because split screen. The texture of it will (hopefully) only loaded once for both screens.
What can change is the total amount of objects that are loaded into memory since the players can now be simultaneously on two different places.
So as a Developer you will need to find a way to get around this. Maybe by reducing the textures of the objects even more, so that you can load more of them in the same space. Or maybe by remove non essential object from the scene at all so that by default less object needed to be loaded. Also the screen is now half the size so maybe limit the field of view more to start loading in objects a little later.
What ever they decide to do, this will require additional steps that are only needed because MS want’s the game to be optimised for the series S.
From a Developer perspective I could understand if they maybe decide to ditch the Xbox release completely because of this additional workload needed.
Plus: if removing background objects from the scene in order to save memory is something that needs to be consistent on both S and X version because of MS policy, you will get “less graphics” on the X then what would be possible, just because the S exist… What completely undermines the complete existence of the X.
And of course non of this is just because split screen. This will most likely be true for every game on Xbox. It’s just that for most games it’s enough to cut resolution down for the S and leave the rest as it is.
Each view of the world requires that the entire visible world be loaded twice, so that it can be seen from each players perspective independent of the other.
If we go into a dungeon, I go left and you go right, it has to render both pathways simultaneously. In a single player or single screen two player game, it only has one path to consider.
Loading in memory and rendering are different things. Of course it needs to be rendered twice but also you cut resolution in half so rendered both screens is not that much more of work.
Did I at some point say that I’m the most advanced expert?
I just pointed out that many of the statements in the article don’t make sense from a logical point of view. Split screen with this game on the S will be possible, I’m sure it will, but that requires additional work to do regardless of what the reasoning behind this is.
Now I just reading pointless sh*t Talk while I was trying to hold a technical conversation… But yes thank you all.
Dude, you rocked up saying both the writer and I didn’t “seam [sic] to know much about video game development,” then proceeded to be, well, loud and wrong about how split screen works. You can’t get defensive when you started out attacking.
Didn’t want to be offensive sorry if you felt that way.
I think I made my point clear. Maybe I’m wrong about some details about split screen maybe we talking all about the same stuff but misunderstanding each other IDK. But again my main point is a different.
Because all my statements about split screen are actually just coming from general knowledge about game development and working on a network multiplayer game and assuming what would not be needed in local co-op I actually did some research about this topic now to make sure I didn’t had false assumptions here.
This video here shows one Implementation of split screen youtu.be/tkBgYD0R8R4 of course this could be implemented differently by larian studios but I’m pretty sure the basic principle stays the same.
And the basic principle is not running the game two times. It’s running two Views at the same time in the same world. So obviously there is no need to have everything twice in memory. So right now I don’t see anything about what I said about split screen being proven wrong.
Of course there will be more load on the hardware for two players split screen but it’s not the game running two times.
No questions that the a slower RAM compared to X or PS5 is causing bottleneck on the series S, never denied this, but this bottlenecks will go down in FPS performance and all of this can be worked around by developers by “optimising” the game. At which point this optimisation is seen as reduction in quality is up to debate. That’s what I want to say.
BG3’s PC minimum specs list 4gb vram and 8gb normal ram. Assuming windows uses 3 gb, that’s 9gbs of total memory that the game needs. They could just use lower res textures when in splitscreen and be done with it, but I guess they want to compromise as little as possible
Edit: apparently Microsoft wants games to use less than 6 just in case someone tries to activate all background functions at once. That is indeed quite stupid.
I didn’t see any mentions of how much overhead the system has in the article? I had assumed it would be 2 gb as why else would they make 2gb of the memory slower than the rest. Someone else in the thread basically confirms that, but apparently Microsoft wants games to run within 6gbs just in case background downloads / chat etc takes 2gb more.
Because statements like “… Isn’t about graphics or frame rate; it’s memory” don’t make sense at all.
I get what you’re saying but it does make sense actually. The Series S has incredibly under-powered memory which has hobbled a lot of developers thus far. It’s the core reason why they can’t get split-screen working right yet. Framerate/graphics are more associated with GPU performance, which is not as big of an issue for the S. Everything bottlenecks on the very small, very weak memory they provided.
Nah, the specific issue they’re having is definitely a memory issue. Split-screen doesn’t really require that much more processing power, but it does need more memory, and preferably faster memory, to buffer everything.
The point I think is that a “console” is from a certain PoV a locked down piece of hardware only able to run certain software in certain ways. So eg. Stadia was a console, while AWS virtual desktops are not, despite both being just VMs running on some cloud service.
Point is, it’s the software that makes a console, not the hardware.
A console is a closed off system. The Deck is literally just a Linux PC in handheld format. You can do everything with it, Valve even explicitly encourages you to do that.
The Steam Deck really blurs the lines between PC and console. Modern consoles use AMD64/Radeon hardware and at least the Xbox consoles use a modified Windows OS. The Steam Deck uses AMD64/Radeon hardware and a modified Linux OS. Both feature a controller-focused user interface centered around gaming.
If you exclude the Steam Deck from the definition of “console” then a console is defined by its restrictive nature and limited selection of games.
If you include the Steam Deck in the definition of “console” then a console is defined by its controller-friendly and gaming-first design (as opposed to a general purpose PC).
It really doesn't. Consoles are a completely closed off system, to the point where modifying it can get you banned from online services. The Deck is the complete opposite to that, with Valve even explicitly encouraging you to tinker with it. It always has been advertised as being a full PC, because you can do all the things you can do on a PC. You can literally go into desktop mode and have your regular KDE Plasma screen.
By your definition every gaming PC would count as being a console. That's just nonsense.
I feel like this is a modernized definition of “console”. The earliest consoles distinguished themselves from the computers of the time by being gaming-first, not by being restrictive and closed off. Things that defined a console were not coming with a keyboard or mouse, connecting primarily to a television rather than a monitor, and using a joystick or gamepad for input.
There were a lot of instances of third party published games for consoles in the past, whether officially licensed or unofficial, approved or unapproved. The online service definition ignores half of the console generations in video gaming history. There were a lot of unlicensed/3rd party games published for the 8-bit and 16-bit era consoles (and yes, some of those had to bypass security chips, but I don’t think all of them did).
I think in some ways the Steam Deck is a return to form of these earlier machines, but in a modern way (and handheld). Valve’s openness isn’t a good reason to not consider the Steam Deck a console. I fully agree that it is a PC, but I feel like it fits both definitions in the best way possible.
They weren't gaming first, they were gaming only. You didn't load up an office program on an atari or snes. That didn't really change until they combined them for media purposes, like playing CDs, DVDs & BDs, and even that was extremely limited and without consistency.
No idea what your homebrew / piracy paragraph is supposed to be in regards to this topic though. That's not just not official, but straight up "illegal" in the minds of their creators. As a kid I personally owned one of those SNES adapters where you'd plug in a floppy disk and would rip the game from the cardridge into a rom. If we were caught with that we might've even got into legal trouble. On a Deck you can copy & paste all the files you want. You can download and run all the programs you want, albeit a tiny bit more restricted than your regular desktop distro. But in essence, it's still a full fledged PC, with everything that comes with it, and you could use it just for non gaming purposes if you so wish.
It's simply that. A Linux PC in a handheld format.
This is admittedly REALLY pedantic, but there were some non-game cartridges released for the NES and SNES, such as Taboo: The Sixth Sense (a tarot card reading program), Miracle Piano (a program for teaching how to play the piano), Mario Paint (a basic music composition and drawing program), and a modem add-on for the Famicom that supported banking, stock trading, and horse race betting.
I wasn’t referring to piracy, I was referring to unofficial releases. Think Wisdom Tree and their line of Bible Games for the NES/SNES (these are pretty well covered by YouTube creators which is why I mention them as an example). Also, some of the early consoles did have non-gaming uses. I believe there was a version of BASIC for the Atari 2600. There were several planned online communication systems for various early consoles. There was the “Work Boy” accessory for the Game Boy that turned it into a digital assistant/organizer. There were officially licensed cooking “games” for the Nintendo DS that were more of recipe collections than actual games. And you touched on media, which was another thing consoles did outside of gaming since CD drives became used on consoles. Wii Fit was more of a fitness accessory than it was a game.
Pretty much the only thing that separates PC from console in your definition is whether you can run your own code on it. I don’t disagree that being able to run your own code on a machine is a huge benefit, but do you consider the iPhone a console? What about the Amazon Echo Show? Smart fridge? These have the locked down ecosystems of consoles but aren’t gaming-first. I would say no, they are not consoles and I’m sure you would agree.
Of course yeah. But more often than not PC isn’t factored in when something is called exclusive or not because honestly PC and Consoles aren’t in competition in the same way consoles are with each other.
Ghost of Tsushima is a PlayStation exclusive game (so far at least, fingers crossed it’ll come to PC soon), but God of War 2018 is a PlayStation console exclusive, small but important distinction
I’m playing it on the Steam Deck, but it definitely has issues. Have to occasionally restart the game because it starts lagging or being able to interact.
I have like 70 hours on it only on the deck. Zero issues. I think you need to stop saying it has issues just because you have issues. It seems to just be a you thing.
I’ve been debating which console I might want to get for awhile now and this may have been the final straw pushing me towards the PS5. Haven’t been this excited about this game in a long time and there are several other exclusives that look amazing too.
I’ve been an Xbox Guy™ since the 360 launched, but I have a PS5 this generation. I don’t want to shill it too hard but the exclusives are great, I’m glad I switched.
I mean the whole point that xboxers were making when the ps5 was released was ‘but gamepass!’. Now that ps also has their ‘game subscription’, I do not really see the appeal of an xbox, especially if you also own a pc. PS has exclusives, xbox does not - at least not ones I’d be interested in and couldn’t play on PC.
Okay so after seeing the bot TLDR and the other comments, I actually went and read the article. It’s a bit wishy washy as to why and mentions RAM could be the issue for S consoles.
When I read the headline I thought it meant it was also not viable for PCs either, which doesn’t seem to be the case at all. Most PCs have at least 16GB ram these days.
Why are people upset at all? I don’t get it. I actually think this is good, it will either force Microsoft to change their policy with consoles and/or release a line that can compete with PS. Or else. Meanwhile PC is still an option.
It’s been a while since I did Xbox memory mapping (One X) but IIRC there is approx 2GB of ram withheld by the system, and then an additional one or two can be recalled by the system for the purposes of running things like background downloads, party chat, video chat. That means that when your game goes to cert it’s checked to be performant under max OS load; so 6GB. This causes lots of issues (and is a pain as even MS’s analytics indicated this was a use case that appeared almost never. From what I have heard since, these TCRs/XRs/FTCs having changed much.
When I read the headline I thought it meant it was also not viable for PCs either, which doesn’t seem to be the case at all. Most PCs have at least 16GB ram these days.
Also keep in mind that PC doesn’t have unified memory. So there’s usually at least 8GB of VRAM in addition to whatever amount of main memory you have.
I don’t think anyone is upset? Xbox players are of course disappointed because they want the game but Larian have been totally fair and upfront about everything.
Microsoft should really re-evaluate their policies here though I agree. I feel like split screen could be an exception to the rule specifically.
And how would you recommend they optimize a game so they can render it twice in split screen, when the S only has 10 Gb of RAM? Because that’s the issue here.
It’s obviously impossible for me to recommend specifics without seeing their code and data. But a lot can be done in 10 GiB with some effort and clever resource management. They might have to make fundamental changes to their engine if they didn’t plan for such constraints ahead of time, so maybe it won’t happen for this game. But what they learn through this experience could benefit their future work.
We get it, you’re a huge xbox fan and you’re disappointed it doesn’t have a release date. But let’s be clear here: this is 100% on Microsoft. Larian has made it clear they aren’t happy with the level of quality of the game on the S (believe specifically for split-screen) and they are holding out on a release date until solutions can be found. That is 100% their right, and you better believe if they released with a shitty performing S version there would be tons of articles, tweets, threads, etc moaning and calling them out on it (instead of the universal praise it is currently receiving). If Microsoft really wants the game on their console sooner they have options: They can help Larian get the S version running properly by providing developers/knowledge/tools/etc, or they could allow for games to have exceptions for certain game features on X vs S.
If anything, Larian have gone above and beyond what most other larger AAA companies put out: Cross-play, cross-save, DRM free, and a huge open-world full of enough options and branching paths to put basically every other RPG to shame. It’s clear they want to deliver a great game that has everything possible they can put in it to please their customers. And part of that is not putting out a crappy version of the game. If you don’t like it, maybe take it up with Microsoft; or wait patiently and see if they can’t optimize and get things figured out once they game releases on the other platforms and they can spend more time focusing on the xbox platform.
There’s two views I see here from a software engineering perspective: multi-targeting devices with different specs can get really hard, and that modern development consumes resources in excess.
View 1: If you design a device that won’t catch up to modern expectations (limited, shared memory being the factor here), don’t expect to run all of the games. Some (or most) games will demand a certain level of resources. Microsoft either expected their status to swing their will upon the developers or were willing to help but just flopped on predicting what would be needed over the device lifetime. It’s a hard job, balancing developer need and cost. The hardware developers did their best. This comes down to
View 2: It’s an old coot viewpoint, but goddamn are modern computer programs are bloated pieces of mess. This is NOT an insult to the game developers, but it is to the OS and the engine developers as a whole. The entire programming industry has assumed that bigger more betterer computer always gonna come in a year or so. So now we have gigabytes of unused HQ textures in game downloads for no reason. Windows OS with Chrome takes gigabytes of RAM to display a webpage. We went from ultra strict data streaming to CPU rates for Crash Bandicoot to an NVME SSD shoveling half a terabyte a second when you want it in the Xbox Series X. This has left those who cannot afford strong PCs (note: most of the third world) and now consoles from playing the latest and greatest games. Developers leave them behind by grasping at the end of Moore’s Law. If BattleBit can produce good gameplay with 256 players on a raw potato, AAA game engines should try and appeal to everyone now.
They can help Larian get the S version running properly by providing developers/knowledge/tools/etc
Iirc, Microsoft is actually trying to help them get it running on S. I wish I could remember where I heard that, but I’ve been reading and watching too much on the game recently to find it.
Mate, you’re not John Carmack. It would be a ridiculous assumption to think their developers didn’t take a serious look into optimisation before deciding to ignore the xbox ecosystem for initial launch.
To be fair fully maxed out settings on PC It’s only using ~4GB for me? I was surprised but that seems to be how it is. I have 32GB and was using roughly half overall on the machine so plenty available.
I’ve played this game a bit and I really don’t understand why it can’t be scaled down visually to work. It’s not some game that needs to target high fps or something.
if you have X amount of work to do, you can’t just “add optimization” and somehow you’ll have less work to do.
if a game needs all the resources, then a well optimized game would still require all resources. but the unoptimized one would just not run properly.
optimized means “it uses the hardware efficiently”. bg3 is a very well optimized game. it uses the hardware efficiently, and it uses all of the hardware. at a particular point, the only optimization left to do, is to do less work, i.e. to cut content.
optimization isn’t some magic sauce you add to computer code to make it run faster. optimization is about writing good, performant code. at some point it’s going to get as good as it can get.
the reason it needs higher specs than previous games is that it is doing a lot more than previous games. there is more work to do. what you’re saying is akin to “this tiny car can do 100mph. why doesn’t mine also do 100 mph when i stuff it full of bricks and give it a smaller engine?” well, it’s because it has a lot more weight to carry, and less engine to do it with
The GPU of the series S is simply a lot worse, socutting quality by a bit won’t cut it. I also suspect that since they always quote the split screen as problem, it might be about the number of textures to be loaded in when the game is kind of running twice, not the quality.
Why would you load a texture twice in memory? Especially if it’s for the exact same object? It only needs to be rendered twice the texture stays the same and therefore only need to be stored once in ram…
He didn’t say load a texture twice, he said twice the textures - which is a worst case scenario, but you could get if the players aren’t near to each other.
I really wish people would read articles before commenting. I went looking for an article like this specifically that talks about the issues involved and folks can’t even be bothered to read beyond the headline. 😞
Because you’re focused on the visuals from a single user perspective…
There’s the world state and game logic to consider as well, and this would be relevant even in a 2D sprite based game.
The article makes it clear that it’s the couch co-op split screen that is causing the most headaches, with whatever additional overhead there is in maintaining another active character and rendering of the world on screen.
because split screen requires rendering stuff twice. and also needing to keep more stuff in memory simultaneously, depending on what two players might have in their field of view, instead of just one.
also, reducing the (subjective) quality by half, does not necessarily mean that you are now using half the resources. And also your game would look like shit compared to its contemporaries
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