Baldur’s Gate 3 is the hottest game of the year, but the massive RPG currently doesn’t hVe a release date on Xbox Series consoles. Fans of the console’s most powerful version want Microsoft to abandon Xbox Series S parity to get the game on Xbox quicker.
A post on the Xbox Series X subreddit showed fans’ unhappiness at the current state of parity on Xbox consoles. Currently, Microsoft enforces rules where every gameplay feature must be present on both Series S and Series X consoles.
However, this has caused issues in recent months with Baldur’s Gate 3 unable to get split-screen co-op in a useable state on Xbox Series S. Due to Series S parity, this means the game isn’t launching on Series X either as the developers don’t want to launch without the feature.
In the Xbox subreddit post, the majority of fans want Microsoft to abandon feature parity and allow developers to bring games to consoles with extra options on Series X. While a decent percentage of fans want to keep parity between the two as a core feature, the majority of fans do not.
However, the most popular comment in the controversial post does bring up a good compromise: a case-by-case basis for game parity on Xbox consoles. This would allow games such as Baldur’s Gate 3 to launch with missing features on Series S, as long as they aren’t major gameplay features.
Unfortunately, there is a reason that Microsoft isn’t doing this with Xbox Series parity: precedence. Once a single developer gets the leeway to cut features on Series S, other developers will undoubtedly try to cut corners on the platform to release unfinished titles on the lower-power machine.
The Xbox Series S has been a successful machine for Microsoft, bringing more gamers into the Xbox ecosystem. While the small console has become less popular after the death of retail mode emulators, it’s still a popular Game Pass machine and a great deal for younger gamers.