Baldur’s Gate 3, the third installment in Larian Studios’ long-running RPG series, comes to PC and Google Stadia on September 30. Or it would, if it had not been delayed again. Gamers got some bad news this week when the game was now delayed to October 6. That’s the only real bad news though, as things are looking to improve from there. Fans have wanted to continue the franchise for years, so they can wait another week.
So back to the point. When and will the game come to consoles? The fantasy RPG genre already has a ton of reach, and this franchise has a ton of presence within the genre. So it would make sense to get fans new and old into the new sequel. That would mean that the game would hopefully come to consoles at some point.
The Baldur’s Gate franchise has been pretty successful on consoles, so will the new sequel follow suit? Will Baldur’s Gate 3 follow a similar path and get PS4 and Xbox One versions? It would make sense to appeal to a wider audience, though there may be a problem.
In short, no. Baldur’s Gate 3 is only launching on PC and Google Stadia. In an interview with Eurogamer in February, Larian Studio’s executive producer David Walgrave made this clear. The explanation is that the game just wouldn’t run at a level graphically satisfactory with modern consoles. The amount of optimization and changes that would be needed to make the RPG work on PS4 or Xbox One is apparently too much. Larian has been working on this game and putting in the work to make that work essentially undone does kind of make sense.
The game also got delayed a bit last month, so the time taken already feels super long. Taking more time for a console launch should only be done wisely.
Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vincke has said basically the opposite. Speaking to GameSpot in June, Vincke said: “Our focus right now is PC and Stadia. We’re going to first focus very hard on getting those two to work, and then we’ll see what happens,” when discussing viability of a console port. There are no details about possible plans, but fans and analysts have their speculation to fall back on.
In practice, it may not be possible to run the game on the PS4 or Xbox One, but that doesn’t rule out PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X editions. The RPG could make the jump to next-gen sometime in 2021. It would be a definite boost for both consoles to offer more CRPG experience to bring gamers who might not have experience with the gameplay style into the fold. For now, though, Baldur’s Gate 3 will only be available to play on PC or Google Stadia.