Baldur's Gate III's developer Larian has said that split-screen is a must for the Xbox Series versions of the game, but currently the Xbox Series S is proving to be a bit of a problem with it.
According to a new interview with Eurogamer, Larian boss Swen Vincke is still hopeful about split-screen, but acknowledges the problems with the less powerful Xbox console. "The team has been working hard on making it work, but they're still working on it. And the problem with optimisations is you finish one thing and then a new one pops up. So here, we're dealing with a situation where we just go through the motions."
"If it's possible, they'll make it happen. But it's a very big game... It's all fine and well if you have one character walking around the city, but if the party splits up and there's four characters going in four different directions in the city, and they start doing the crazy shit that I'm doing - fireballs, [etc.] - it's a lot of simulation that has to happen on one screen. And so that's taxing. That requires memory."
Xbox does require parity between the console releases of its games, and so if Larian cannot make split-screen work on the Series S, it may not end up on the Series X either. This is something Vincke wants to avoid, though.
"Split-screen is a must for us and we don't want to release it without split-screen, so we wouldn't want to do that."