Baldur's Gate 3 Getting Performance Improvements on PC and PS5 Thanks to Optimization Done for Xbox

Both the PC and PS5 versions of Baldur's Gate 3 will get performance improvements with the next patch, and that's thanks to all the optimization work done for the Xbox Series X|S port.

[Obscure_Observer]

One can only wonder how the PS5 getting performance improvements thanks to the Series S is even possible since according to some people, that console is not a current gen console. /S

Anyway, amazing work by a very talent non-lazy developers at Larian Studios!

I can´t wait to play BG3 on my SX!

[Babadook7]

It’s ironic isn’t it? Nothing to do with the S being a capable machine. Quite the opposite. But the game needed optimization and were getting it now. Had there never been an S we might have got it sooner as it certainly would've freed up developers and testers.

[Notellin]

Such spectacular insight @Babadook7!

This is why I'm thankful that Microsoft bought all those developers so we could get updates faster. Having to develop for PlayStation too was holding back all those developers and Microsoft finally freed them up.

/s

[anast]

He/she got you there @Obscure.

[Neonridr]

or you may never have gotten it..

[StarkR3ality]

Tbf, that's what a lot of what Digital foundry have said, having a baseline as the S means that Devs have to optimise for that, and those optimisations get passed up to the Series X and PS5.

Overall I've not really been impressed with this consoles gen in regards to performance anyway, most are 30fps locked now and to get to 60fps a lot of titles offer below par image quality, it's why I decided to jump to PC as my main and PS5 for exclusives. 720p in some titles 3 years in just isn't excusable to me.

[darthv72]

@dook... Larian may have not found the problem and left things the way they are had it not been for tweaking and optimizing the S version. It was by pure accident they found the problem in the first place as they felt things were just hunky dory on the PS5 and SX versions having ported from the PC.

[Babadook7]

@darthv72

Thanks for the comment. But I disagree about Lorian optimizing because of the S. They knew there was a big problem since the PC version shipped, or even before that. And yes, they struggled for a long time with the S version specifically, but not all of that was helpful in the long run. It's tough to say whether the S actually helped the other platforms overall, or hindered them, because the "S" certainly seems to have used a lot of resources.

[--Onilink--]

Whats the point of disagreeing with the comment here when the tweet confirming the work on the Xbox version allowed the improvements comes directly from someone in Larian?

This isnt really speculation about whether it happened that way or not, they are the ones saying it did

[Babadook7]

@Onilink

I don’t know who is directly disagreeing with Larian here? Can you be specific?

[Obscure_Observer]

"Had there never been an S we might have got it sooner as it certainly would've freed up developers and testers."

Highly unlikely. There wasn´t an Xbox Series S holding the PS5 version back and split-screen mode on PS5 still end up running like crap.

It was the Series S optimizations that made it possible to PS5 to have better performance, that´s what the developers said themselves, so armchair developers on N4G got slapped in the face from Larian themselves.

I mean, the weaker console that were supposed to hold back the generation actually end up helping the more powerful ones.

You can´t make sh!t It is what it is.

[Babadook7]

@obscure_observer

“Highly unlikely. There wasn´t an Xbox Series S holding the PS5 version back and split-screen mode on PS5 still end up running like crap.”

Very likely. There was indeed a major attempt to develop and launch the S version with PS5 version. That sucked dev time, therefore just because they failed to launch on that platform does not prove your point. It’s evidence for mine.

“It was the Series S optimizations that made it possible to PS5 to have better performance, that´s what the developers said themselves, so armchair developers on N4G got slapped in the face from Larian themselves.”

It wasn’t S optimizations that made it “possible”. Poor choice of words. It was work done on Xbox that applied to other versions as well. The same thing happens all the time and most likely happened the other way too, while optimizing for ps5 and pc. Theres nothing magical about working on S that gives you free PS5 optimizations. I’m an actual game dev, you seem extremely ignorant about how this stuff works.

“I mean, the weaker console that were supposed to hold back the generation actually end up helping the more powerful ones.”

Nope. Larian never said that S is helping here more than it’s hindering.

[maniacmayhem]

What's even funnier, is that it's LITERALLY and actually Larian studios saying thanks to the Xbox for the optimizations coming to the PC and PS5 and we still have people on this site that says it has nothing to do with that.

[Babadook7]

“LITERALLY and actually Larian studios saying thanks to the Xbox for the optimizations coming to the PC and PS5“

Link or quote?

[--Onilink--]

“link or quote”

How about literally the tweet that this entire article was made from….

Again, this isnt some random person saying it, its the head of publishing at Larian…

[Babadook7]

This one?

Larian:
"What’s more, performance improvements are coming to both PC and PS5 on behalf of all the work that’s gone into optimising for Xbox"

Notice how different that is form what maniacmayhem quoted.

“LITERALLY and actually "Larian studios saying thanks to the Xbox for the optimizations coming to the PC and PS5“"

It isn't "thanks to" xbox at all. It's thanks to Larian! IE; their work! Which is what I just quoted above him!

Me
"It was work done on Xbox that applied to other versions as well. "

But keep trying you blind biased fanboys. LOL

[maniacmayhem]

@babadook

You are desperately trying hard to not give any credit to Xbox. Even when multiple articles have stated they have and the actual quote says otherwise.

"What’s more, performance improvements are coming to both PC and PS5 on behalf of all the work that’s gone into optimising for Xbox."

Because of their work on Xbox, getting things to run smoothly there. They were able to take that work and transfer that over to PS5 which also has a number of performance issues.

You can actually read about it here,

https://www.ign.com/article...

**It isn't "thanks to" xbox at all. It's thanks to Larian! IE; their work! Which is what I just quoted above him!**

Would those improvements have came without work on Xbox...maybe, maybe not...but we're making conclusions on what actually happened and right now Larien is contributing the performance work on S for the improvements going into PS5

Nobody is taking anything away from Larien or saying something different.

**But keep trying you blind biased fanboys. LOL**

...Irony...

[Babadook7]

“Would those improvements have came without work on Xbox...maybe, maybe not...”

Exactly. More or less what I said all along. So stop trying to say that S is helping newer gen consoles. Thats pure speculation at best and at worst, nonesense.

And also, you xboners could not show the contradiction between what Larian and I said. It was you guys misquoting, and putting words in their mouth.

[Babadook7]

“Nobody is taking anything away from Larien or saying something different.“

This quote from you is very different.

“LITERALLY and actually Larian studios saying thanks to the Xbox“

They said no such thing. It was wishful thinking from the Xbox fanboys including you maniac

[Games1st]

It's from fixing a bug they made that they applies to all platforms.

[Einhander1972]

Well done Series S you delayed the launch and caused 4 months of extra work for Larian... I'm sure they wouldn't have rather used that time doing other things...

And I still haven't heard them say the game is going to have split screen or any other missing features, and getting it to run doesn't mean it runs well....

[Mr_cheese]

Obscurer knew the answer to what they typed.

It's pretty simple. If you're forced to truly optimise a game to play on the weakest system then that same optimisation can be used to make the same game run even better on the more efficiently powerful ones.

Great news for all games to be honest.

[StoneTitan]

What did anyone exbex from you ey. You dont even know what you are talking about.
That said, Larian did not optimize this game very well. So looking forward to some more optimization.

[mkis007]

You are talking about the console that delayed the xbox release...idk what your point is frankly.

[Obscure_Observer]

"You are talking about the console that delayed the xbox release...idk what your point is frankly."

Thanks to the Series S optimizations, we gonna get a better and improved BG3 port on Series X than you had on your PS5 at release!

We might be getting the game later, but I rather have a more polished BG3 on my Series X than the version that we got on PS5 on release.

We not getting some hindered or downgraded port because of the Series S like some armchair developers on N4G were predicting. We´ll be getting a superior port instead thanks to the little guy S.

So eggs in their faces.

That´s my point and my opinion.

[Mr_cheese]

How can it be superior if the changes will be reflected across the board?

[-Foxtrot]

The reason the Series S is providing these benefits to other versions is because they are literally working non stop trying to find a way around the shitty Series S specs so it can run on the console. They succeeded because they’ve went the extra mile, probably some deal or whatever with MS over their parity rule and because of trying even harder they’ve discovered some things.

If it ran kind of okay on the Series S where they didn’t have to look into it and it was released at the same time as the other versions these things wouldn’t have been discovered.

[Sephiroushin]

It doesn't take a Genius to know that If you optimize a game to run on a toaster it will perform better everywhere else as well …

[Chevalier]

Exactly if it wasn't an issue like Observer suggests then gamers on Xbox would already be playing this instead of waiting

[Soulsborne]

Ironic how an entire platform cant play GOTY because of poor decisions by M$, but youre used to it arent you

[KwietStorm_BLM]

I'm convinced you're just on here trolling 24hrs a day and watching people fall for it. There's no other explanation for these things you say.

[CombatEmu]

"I can´t wait to play BG3 on my SX!"

Considering how much time you dedicate on this site (and who knows how long on others), yeah... I'm pressing X to doubt on this one.

[maniacmayhem]

What's funny is, a lot of people (especially on this site) don't realize that BG3 didn't particularly run very well on PS5. The co-op split screen that some here were so concerned for, ran like trash and considerably dropped the framerate of the game.

So these optimizations and improvements are an actual good thing, so thanks to them spending more time on the S and figuring it out.

[mjchitown]

53 clowns who dislike your comment eating crow

[Babadook7]

@Above.

I don’t know who is directly disagreeing with Larian here? Can you be specific?

[Binarycode]

I would more likely say, since both Consoles use similar architecture and AMD hardware that any main code that is nothing to do with DIRECTX would transfer over.

[itsmebryan]

Xbox to PS5 and PC. " Your welcome. Enjoy. "😉

[FPS_D3TH]

It isn’t a current gen console. It literally cannot keep up and has to sacrifice features lmao. Cope.

[mkis007]

"downgraded port because of the Series S like some armchair developers on N4G were predicting. We´ll be getting a superior port instead thanks to the little guy S. "

Uh? Did they not drop split screen from the s version? Thats very much a downgrade.

At least it might come after launch...but you dont like that according to your comment.

[Kyizen]

Yeah devs had to waste time and effort on getting the game to work on the S

[Kaze88]

@Obscure_Observer like you said multiple times XS is not hindering development of games

Larian had to:
- delay the game on Xbox
- get special permission from Xbox to drop the parity to loose coop on the XS
- do extra 3-4 months work on the XS to make it work properly

I think that is very indicative that XS is hindering development. Also even if there was a PS4 or Switch or X0 version coming out, optimizations learned from there could apply to PS5 and PC. Just because investing extra development XS yielded better performance improvements upwards to other means nothing of the sorts that XS is a full current gen console.

[Mr_cheese]

This also proves that the parity clause can't be enforced 100% of the time because of their weaker system which means any big games that struggle will ultimately be accommodated for by Microsoft to ensure that they don't lose out in the long run.

[Rimeskeem]

Wonder how long it would have taken if the S didn't exist.

"I can tell a lot of these were 'finally, we did *this*!'"

[XiNatsuDragnel]

If the S didn't exist imo this game would have been out the door imo.

[sparky77]

Series S continuing to make this generation of games better :)

[andy85]

This has to be a parody 😂😂

[jznrpg]

Wow. You guys will spin anything

[Jin_Sakai]

“Series S continuing to make this generation of games better :)“

More like causing delays and more work from developers just to get the game out the door.

[itsmebryan]

@jin
You forgot " More like causing delays and more work from the developers just to get the game right. " That's better.

[Mr_cheese]

Series Sparky

[autobotdan]

Xbox to the rescue

[anast]

This spin to make the S look better is sleazy.

[repsahj]

If the series s doesn't exist, the game will continue to be optimized, and no parity issue will be solved.

[shammgod]

Heeeey! XBOX is good for something!! Innit

[DefaultComment]

Better PC performance or at least more efficient? I'm not complaining!

[Zenzuu]

It should've been better optimized in the first place before release.

[Ironmike]

Haven't bought this for my ps5 yet as I have never played this type of game before but not sure whether to bite bullet and give it a go

[maniacmayhem]

It's almost as if the series S is a capable machine and not holding back this generation.

[babadivad]

This article and the people responding to it is proof people can read the same article and come up with completely opposite conclusions. 😂😂

[frostypants]

Flip side: the game could have been prettier with these opimizations if they didn't have to think about the Series S at all. That the Series S "forced" them doesn't really change that.

[SimpleSlave]

XBONE SERIES S REDEEMED!!!! Now do the Atari Jaguar next. The optimization is gonna go through the roof!

Let's go! 🤜 🤛

[Babadook7]

🧠👍

[SimpleSlave]

💪🧠🤳

[Gregero]

That's VERY cool. Great job, Larian Studios! And thank you to the S users! I'm on PC but I'll be grabbing it for PS5 and I'm super glad to know it'll be even better.

[ZycoFox]

It'll run better on PC if you have a decent rig.. it does now as it is.

[Gregero]

Yeah it runs amazing on my machine. I just like the idea that I'll be able to play it on console from my couch now.

[DazaMc]

This is the best thing to come from a potato since chips!

[QuantumMechanic]

Take-home message about modern game development: "We only devote significant effort to optimization if a platform-holder provides assistance".

I wish all of these studios would show more class by releasing finished products.

[SinisterKieran]

considering i haven't had any problems with performance on pc. i don't see how it can get any better.

[Dandizzle]

so we are getting news from freaking twitter now, really?

[Destiny1080]

Pc developers are not known for there optimization

they tried putting everything on low and it still didn't work

phil gets full credit for releasing this s model

[Ironmike]

How is this on ps5 never played dnd but iam curious with all the glowing reviews

[purple101]

Any optimisations for multiplayer on seriesS,

oh, wait a minute