Microsoft appeared to have underestimated the level of success Baldur's Gate 3 would achieve and mistakenly assumed that acquiring it for Xbox Game Pass on its release date would be a low-cost endeavor.
Leaked documents and emails from Microsoft reveal that Xbox executives referred to Baldur's Gate 3 as a "lesser Stadia PC RPG" in May 2022. This comment comes across as rather disrespectful, particularly considering the game's impressive peak player count of 875,343 and its current Metacritic score of 96.
The projected cost for obtaining Baldur's Gate 3 on Xbox Game Pass is approximately $5 million, according to Microsoft. Meanwhile, EA's Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was estimated to cost over $300 million, and WB's Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League had a budget exceeding $250 million. However, the release of the latter game has been delayed until February 2024 due to its unfavorable reception during Sony State of Play in February 2023. Consequently, its value on Game Pass has most likely decreased since then.
In response to the leaked estimation for Baldur's Gate 3, Michael Douse, the director of publishing at Larian, commented on Twitter, stating, "In their defense, everyone else had similar estimations. The same was true for DOS2. It's part of the genre, our approach, and the way we execute things. Unfortunately, there was no existing data to predict how BG3 would perform, so we had to take risky leaps of faith."
Baldur's Gate 3 has encountered problems running on Xbox Series S because of its co-op split-screen feature. As a result, the game has not been released on Xbox yet. However, a mutually agreed upon solution has been reached between both parties. The co-op split screen feature will be available on Series X but not on Series S. As a result, the game is expected to launch on Xbox by the end of 2023.
Given the incredible success of Baldur's Gate 3, Larian Studios will undoubtedly be held in high regard in the future.
