Highlights

  • Larian Studios is making great progress in optimizing Baldur's Gate 3 for the Xbox Series S.
  • The developer reduced the game's RAM and VRAM requirements on the Series S by 10% and 35%, respectively. As a result, the RPG no longer needs to resort to using the slower memory in the Series S.
  • The CEO of Larian believes this improvement will also benefit all other versions of Baldur's Gate 3.

Larian Studios shared a promising update on its efforts to optimize Baldur's Gate 3 for the Xbox Series S, suggesting that its recent progress on this front will also benefit those playing on the Series X, PlayStation 5, and PC. Potential multi-platform improvements aside, this development is first and foremost good news for anyone awaiting the Baldur's Gate 3 Xbox version.

First released for PC on August 3, Baldur's Gate 3 made its way to the PS5 on September 6. Larian initially intended to push the Xbox version of the game into 2024, but after bearing witness to the RPG's immense success, Microsoft found a way to fast-track the port. Specifically, the tech giant waived the feature parity requirement for the Series S version, as Larian struggled to make its split-screen multiplayer mode playable on the weaker of the company's two current-gen consoles. As a result, Baldur's Gate 3 is still coming to Xbox in 2023 without split-screen multiplayer on the Series S.

astarion with an xbox series s
Related
Baldur's Gate 3 Confirms Major Feature for Xbox Version

Larian confirms that the Xbox Series X/S versions of Baldur's Gate 3, to be released later this year, will include an important feature.

Larian Massively Reduced Baldur's Gate 3 Memory Requirements on Xbox Series S

Larian CEO Swen Vincke has now shared an update on the company's efforts to further optimize its hit game for the Xbox Series S. Taking to X, formerly Twitter, the official shared two benchmark screenshots that he described as "a nice present from our engineers." The images themselves reveal that Larian recently made some massive inroads in reducing the memory requirements of Baldur's Gate 3 on the Xbox Series S. Specifically, the latest build of the game apparently uses 10% less RAM and around 35% less VRAM.

Baldur's Gate 3 No Longer Needs the Slower Memory in Xbox Series S

Overall, it would appear that the studio managed to bring the Series S version of Baldur's Gate 3 from using approximately 8.7 GB of memory to around 6.9 GB. For reference, while the console has 10 GB GDDR6 memory—which, unlike in PCs, functions as both RAM and VRAM—only 80% of that space comes with a faster 128-bit bus. The remaining 2 GB use a 32-bit bus, which is four times slower and only allows read speeds of up to 56 GB/s. Reducing the memory requirements of the Xbox version of Baldur's Gate 3 below 8 GB should hence deliver a huge boost to the game's performance on the Series S.

Since this newly benchmarked and much-improved build of the RPG was compiled for Xbox consoles, it used DirectX 12, a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for Microsoft's platforms. Yet Vincke believes that the progress his team made in keeping the game's memory requirements under control will benefit "all platforms," which would include the PS5 that doesn't support DirectX 12.

This promising update made some fans hopeful that Larian might eventually figure out a way to even bring the game's local multiplayer mode to Microsoft's budget console. And although Vincke hasn't chimed in on that speculation, Microsoft itself previously said that Baldur's Gate 3 split-screen for the Xbox Series S remains a possibility.