Larian has delayed the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, currently on pace to possibly be 2023’s Game of the Year, until they can figure out how to make split-screen work on Series S.

  • twistedtxb@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    No Series S owner will be mad if a game has Series X specific exclusive content. MS is shooting itself in the foot

    • narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I think people would be mad. Imagine you play a game at your friend’s home on his Series X, and then proceed to buy the game so you can play multiplayer online, only to then have a certain features or game modes missing (say you get team death match but not battle royale because it uses too much memory).

      It’s not that easy to communicate feature disparity. Some people probably don’t even know which Xbox they have.

      • acastcandream@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        At some point, it’s on you to know what your machine can and can’t handle. They put big letters on the front of each game telling you if it’s able to play on the series X and series S. It is right there lol. 

        Also, with smart delivery, it would probably be trivial for Microsoft to have a modal pop up saying “this game is not optimized for series S and will not play, do you still want to purchase?”

        No, the real issue here is developers (not their fault mind you). The moment Microsoft says “you don’t have to make it playable on the S,“ they simply won’t. Because why would you? 

        • redfellow@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          A dev team is more likely to axe Xbox release or features. So because S won’t have enough memory/gpu grunt, X won’t be getting that feature either.

          • Hdcase@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Yep and a lot of times, we won’t even hear about it. It’ll just be another game that happens to be on Playstation and not Xbox, a defacto exclusive of sorts.

            • redfellow@sopuli.xyz
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              1 year ago

              S is required if you want to release a game on X. This means you cannot leverage the technical maximum of X, ever, because the game and all it’s features must run on S.

              • acastcandream@beehaw.org
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                1 year ago

                Yes we know. The comment at the top of this chain is talking about whether or not Microsoft could stop allowing that requirement and the potential blowback. Scroll to the top and start from the beginning you’ll see. 

                  • acastcandream@beehaw.org
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                    1 year ago

                    We know microsoft’s current policy. It’s obvious we do. Please stop this and discuss the topic at hand or move on.

    • magic_lobster_party@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Problem is that it can turn into a slippery slope. Where should MS draw the line if they start to allow Series X exclusive content? Can developers cut entire game modes from the S version if they just ask kindly enough? Or maybe ignore the S version completely? The risk is that developers are going to abuse this opportunity.

      MS wants people to see the Series S as a viable purchase. Why should you buy it when you won’t be able to play the next big release in full?

      • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Yes, they should be able to say “this game doesn’t run on series S” because it’s significantly worse than the other options and it doesn’t deserve the work it takes. It doesn’t even have CPU parity, which is a much bigger deal than less GPU cores.

        • magic_lobster_party@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          That will just betray all the customers who bought Series S. Will they upgrade to a Series X to play the next big thing? No, they will probably just buy a PS5 instead. Why should they continue to stay loyal with MS?

          • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            It’s not capable.

            They might have made the bed and be stuck in it, but it was a bad plan that substantially sabatoges the actual next gen console.

          • redfellow@sopuli.xyz
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            1 year ago

            It was a stupid promise and even worse requirement for publishing a game on the platform.

            They should start considering them just different consoles and remove the parity (and requirement to release on both).

          • acastcandream@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            How is it any different than the number of games coming out that betray all the things they promised?

            As a series S owner, I never expected this thing to be able to play modern AAA games for 7-10 years like previous gens. It’s delusional. It was $300 with a controller ffs lol

    • nathris@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      If a game can’t run on the Series S it means it also can’t be ported to the PC. Turn down the resolution and graphics settings until you get the same fps target and continue in with your day.

      I would expect any game from a developer that complains about this to be so poorly optimized that it runs like it would on the Series S on the bigger consoles, and likely have garbage gameplay as well because they spent all of their budget on graphics.