Why Baldur’s Gate III is an accidental PS5 console exclusive

Are we ignoring the PC as a platform?

Is the PC a console? No. So it can be 'console exclusive' on PS5.
- No. If it were a PS5 exclusive it wouldn't be released on the PC.
- But there are certain titles that are only on PS5 and not PC?
And kind of a console too lol with the steam deck
- The Steam Deck is a full fledged Linux PC in a handheld format.
The Steam Deck is at least a console hybrid, and it works on that.
- 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.

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.
- 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.
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.

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.

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.
Split screen really is the only way if the party can split up
- 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.

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.
I think the wording “console exclusive” is becoming quite wide spread, but for the avoidance of doubt, in the headline, I’d have avoided it perhaps.

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.

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: ::: spoiler Click here to see the summary Baldur’s Gate III is a highly anticipated role-playing game set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, offering familiar classes and abilities in an expansive high-fantasy world.

Though Microsoft’s parity requirements have been in place since the Xbox Series consoles came to market in November 2020, Baldur’s Gate III is the ecosystem’s highest-profile loss directly attributable to these restrictions.

There weren’t a ton of concrete examples to prove this theory, and the Digital Foundry team argued against the idea, citing the existing variance in the PC market and saying that lower targets could actually help games run even better on higher-powered consoles.

“MANY developers have been sitting in meetings for the past year desperately trying to get Series S launch requirements dropped,” Bossa Studios VFX artist Ian Maclure tweeted at the time.

Rocksteady senior character technical artist Lee Devonald similarly tweeted about his experience building Gotham Knights — a game that shipped on consoles with a framerate locked at 30 fps and no performance mode.

Regardless of whether the Series S is restraining the entire video game industry, Xbox parity requirements are literally holding back Baldur’s Gate III, and this system has accidentally created another console exclusive for the PS5, for now. :::

Bad summary

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.

Is that split screen on a PC for local coop? How does that work exactly? two keyboards and two mice? Or what?
- You have to connect two controllers
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.

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.

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. 😞
- I guess I’m having trouble wrapping my head around why this game needs such high specs.
The problem isn't scale, the problem is rendering the game twice for split screen with only 10GB of RAM.
To put this in perspective, the Xbox ONE X has more ram than the Series S. 12 vs. 10.
If you want to solve that problem purely by scaling the graphics, yeah, I bet they could do it in 640x480...
- I guess what I’m really wondering is, is this game unoptimzed causing it to need higher specs?
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.
- RAM is the big bottle neck here.
  Here's the comparison:
  PS5: 16 GB/256-bit GDDR6 SDRAM
  512 MB DDR4 RAM
  Series X: 10 GB/320-bit & 6 GB/192-bit (16 GB total)
  Series S: 8 GB/128-bit & 2 GB/32-bit (10 GB total)
  But more than that, it's the speeds involved:
  PS5 Peak Bandwidth 448 GB/s
  Xbox Series X 10 GB 560 GB/s and 6 GB 336 GB/s
  Xbox Series S 8 GB 224 GB/s and 2 GB with 56 GB/s
  So not just less RAM, but at 1/2 the speed.
- 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...

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.

The article says they're not allowed, legally, to do that, and the ball is on Microsoft's yard.
- 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 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.
Releasing it without a feature that the PS5 does would be bad for the brand. "Sega does what Nintendon't" and all that...
- 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.
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.
Right. A compromise and maybe a discount for the series S. Seems fair.

I hope this leads game engine developers to improve their optimization skills. Chances are the technique(s) needed here have been around for decades.

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.
- 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.