After famously skipping an Xbox console release for Baldur’s Gate 3 due to struggles getting the game to run on Xbox Series S with its split-screen multiplayer features intact, before eventually revealing it was working with Microsoft to finally make an Xbox port happen by the end of the year, Larian Studios has revealed that it’s made something of a small breakthrough in optimising the game for the Series S. Better yet, this could mean good things for the game’s performance on all other platforms, as well.
Larian’s CEO, Swen Vincke, shared a graph on social media that illustrates significant reduction in RAM and VRAM usage in the game, which are things that the studio would be targeting for its Xbox Series S port as crucial bottlenecks on the console. Since September, it’s managed to squeeze the game’s RAM usage down by 10% but importantly it’s also got VRAM usage down by a whopping 34% from 3.5GB right down to 2.3GB.
As PC Gamer notes, that’s significantly less than what the PC version of the game uses even at low, 1080p settings, so it’s something of a minor miracle, and bodes very well for those same optimisations to be applied to other platforms to make the game more performant than ever.
Vincke’s post suggests as much as well, saying, “Got a nice present from our engineers. Ensuring memory is well under control and having buffer for peaks was the main thing holding us back I think this will benefit all platforms too. Still some work left but very close now.”
Got a nice present from our engineers. Ensuring memory is well under control and having buffer for peaks was the main thing holding us back I think this will benefit all platforms too. Still some work left but very close now. pic.twitter.com/xvtUDPFebo
— Swen Vincke @where? (@LarAtLarian) November 8, 2023
We have Baldur’s Gate 3 a monumental 10/10 in our review, saying “Baldur’s Gate 3 is a landmark achievement for CRPGs and gaming at large. The only thing more staggering than its immense scope and density of systems is the quality in which it’s all presented. Its unwavering flexibility and accommodation for player choice is intoxicating, and the replay value on offer here will no doubt cement Baldur’s Gate 3 as a timeless and regularly revisited masterpiece. For a game as rich and complex as this, it also works surprisingly well on console.”
