Microsoft’s Xbox Series S Parity Demands Are Now Handing Sony Free Wins
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forbes.com
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.
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did you think of the possibility that even Larian's low settings still can't run on series S? Given the amount of assets I saw it's actually quite possible that vram requirement are pretty high and that's why PS5 have delay as well so they can figure out ways to consolidate textures used etc. Like they can't even manage to let me stack rope or water bottle properly in inventory(maybe some asset id not cleaned up during development), so having excessive vram usage is fairly easy/common for content heavy games.
Today’s Digital Foundry video suggests that this is far from the issue. Even the highest texture settings fit comfortably in 6 GB. IIRC it was around 4,5 - and consoles typically go for high rather than ultra settings.
Xbox series S have 8GB for game, so while BG3 might consume around 4-5GB on PC, console with unified memory couldn't afford this. All the other assets(model/animation/audio clips/massive amount of icons) needs to be loaded as well. With split screen, you can have one person tries to go into conversation (that streaming in high res texture/face models, etc) while the other one stay and still render the world with all the things their camera can move around with.
I went back and had a look. It’s between 2165MB and 3720 MB based on settings. Doesn’t really seem problematic on the low end.
I don't know what to say other than maybe you should send Larian your resume and type "I am sure series S can be ported no issue, here is my numbers." I am sure Larian would love to have simultaneous launch like PS5 and you can cut a really good deal if you can manage to pull that. BUT, you would have to pass the [Persuasion] check though, hope you have high cha to back it up. :)
Very funny. Just saying that textures don’t seem to be the issue. Any number of other things might be from rendering methods to whatever.
That's only VRAM. You're missing the other half.
It’s unified RAM on Xbox. And medium settings are 2165MB on PC.
For one viewport!
The problem with Series S is split screen.
Also that's 6GB of dedicated VRAM. Consoles have unified memory, so you need to fit the OS and the non-graphics memory in there too.
To be clear, I'm not trying to attack Larian here. I think splitscreen is a much bigger technical hurdle than other games have to deal with and delaying it on the Xbox was the right idea. But, the PC versions minimum requirements is 4GB vram and recommended 8GB vram. The Series S has 10GB vram. I'm more annoyed by the anti Series S rhetoric going around about it holding all games back, because most games with a PC release scale no problem
What you forgot to consider is that the Xbox has to share the RAM with the VRAM. The game on PC has 8GB RAM and 4GB VRAM as minimum. That is 12GB of RAM. The Series S only has 10GB. Which is 2GB less than minimum.
You needs less RAM in total on a system with a unified memory architecture, like both Xbox consoles.
True but not 2GB less, the Xbox is also still running an OS albeit a slimer one. I'd guess the smaller OS saves at best 1GB of RAM.
I did not realise that the Series S shared it's Ram and VRAM. That is something I had missed. Thank you
And with PC, there is only one view point at one time. You can have characters all over the map, but it only needs to render one at a time. Worst case it loads and unloads assets as you switch back and forth. With split screen console, gotta have both loaded at the same time.
It's not baseless rhetoric when a dev team has literally called it out as a big tech hurdle.
What you're not seeing or understanding:
The Xbox Seried S does not have 10GB VRAM it has 10GB VRAM/RAM that can be dynamically allocated to whatever the game needs.
Baldur's Gate 3 needs 12GB combined VRAM/RAM at minimum. While the Xbox OS peobably doesn't eat as much RAM as Windows does the difference is apparently not 2GB which leaves the Series S with not eniugh RAM to power the game.
As others mentioned for the Steamdeck Splitscreen was disabled, however that was likely done to save GPU performance, unlike the Series S the Steamdeck has enough RAM (16GB) to meet the minimum requirements.
See my other reply, 4gb beam is not the same requirement for series S cause consoles use unified memory.(also it only have 8GB for game)
https://www.thegamer.com/xbox-series-s-apparently-vram-issues/
It wasn’t delayed on the PS5; that was the original release plan. They moved the release UP for PC because they didn’t want to have to compete with Starfield’s release. Since that’s not coming out on PS5, they left the release date as is.
Right, I forgot about this, thanks for correction.