We all know that promises are carried away by the wind. In the business world, a promise without a watertight contract is something we should never rely on, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be disappointed. The word still means something. Especially the word to the consumer. But it seems that some people have forgotten that. Especially when, because of those promises, they have to end up breaking them to avoid damaging their own businesses.
This is something that has just happened during GamesCom. Among other Microsoft announcements, they have announced that, despite initially being stated for a 2024 release, Baldur’s Gate 3 will be coming to Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S in 2023. But, of course, with a significant cost. The Xbox Series S version will not have split-screen multiplayer.
This is strikingly notable because the reason the Xbox version wasn’t initially planned to release alongside the PlayStation 5 version was precisely due to the lack of feature parity between the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S versions. While its older counterpart had no issues in this regard, Larian Studios couldn’t efficiently execute split-screen gameplay on the Xbox Series S. This was something that Michael Douse, the Head of Publishing at Larian Studios, mentioned on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter. He stated that Microsoft wouldn’t allow them to release the game on the console until feature parity was achieved between both consoles. This condition was necessary for games to be approved by the company.
However, things have taken an about-face. Now, Phil Spencer has declared that neither he nor anyone at Microsoft has ever stated that Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S must have any form of feature parity in the games released for their consoles. This directly contradicts the reasons provided by Larian Studios up to this point.
Even if we accept what Spencer has said, this is dreadful news for Xbox Series S owners. After all, the head of the brand has stated that if other studios want to release scaled-down versions of their games on the Series S, they will allow it. Or at least that’s what they’ve implied. There’s no reason for a studio not to exclude a specific mode or feature from their game on the Series S due to its lower power.
Ultimately, as Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, has stated, they have never aimed for parity between the Xbox consoles. In fact, there never has been. As evidence, he cited how many games on Xbox Series X have ray tracing while the same games lack it on Xbox Series S. According to Spencer, this demonstrates that the policy of parity never existed in the first place. However, regardless of the rationale, this doesn’t reflect well on them. Particularly when his words suggest that Xbox Series X users will always have a better and more complete version of games compared to what will be available to Xbox Series S users.
This sets a terrible precedent that doesn’t benefit either Xbox or Phil Spencer. It benefits them in the sense that they won’t gift Sony a console exclusive deal with Baldur’s Gate 3, but it harms them by leaving Xbox Series S users in the lurch. Shamelessly telling them that they own a secondary console for which it’s not guaranteed that all games will arrive in the same manner as on other consoles. Even if they were promised otherwise. This creates a dreadful impression and it shouldn’t surprise us if it eventually comes back to haunt them.
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