Baldur’s Gate 3
A forgotten announcement during the abridged GOTY acceptance speech at The Game Awards was that Baldur’s Gate 3 would be coming to Xbox that very evening. I guess they had other, more important things to say in those 30 seconds.
Yes, it did launch on Xbox that night, but no, it did not arrive on Xbox Game Pass as some sort of mega-deal with Microsoft. That would have been a huge coup, launching the GOTY winner on Game Pass that same night, and while it seems pretty obvious Microsoft tried, Larian was not going to bite.
A new interview with IGN asked that question, and Larian boss Swen Vincke said it was a non-starter:
“Oh, we always said from the get-go, it wasn’t going to be on Game Pass, it’s not going to be on Game Pass,” Vincke said. “We made a big game, so I think there’s a fair price to be paid for that, and I think that that is okay.”
Vincke goes on to say the Game Pass question is “sensitive,” but because the game didn’t have microtransactions and you get what you pay for, they believe paying full price for it is fair, and it helps fund their future games.
Game Pass
This once again raises the eternal “Game Pass question” of whether launching on the service or not is good for your game. Studios like Rockstar have totally rejected the idea, which is not a huge shock given Grand Theft Auto sales. Microsoft, of course, has now mandated all its first party games short of Call of Duty (for now) launch day one on Xbox/PC Game Pass, which most recently included Starfield. Starfield was such a big release it still sold pretty well, despite being on Game Pass, between non-GP purchases and its Steam release.
For third party games, however, it’s a tougher sell. The math is that Xbox would have to pay you some massive amount of money to offset lost sales revenue. For some games, this may be worth it if players log in and purchase expansions or microtransactions. But for games that don’t have those things, like Baldur’s Gate, you’re just losing $70 and hoping that Microsoft’s payment offsets that. Given that Baldur’s Gate 3 is no doubt about to experience a sales surge after a high profile GOTY win, no, it would not make much sense to agree to come to Game Pass for its launch on Xbox.
Xbox Game Pass continues to be one of the most hotly debated things in the industry. Microsoft has started launching enormously high profile games on the service, and will launch many, many more in the next few years. And while they maintain it’s profitable, they have not released Game Pass subscription numbers in close to two years. It’s unclear how much they’ve risen above the 25 million from January 2022, numbers that surged high during the pandemic, but no doubt have slowed dramatically. But like how Microsoft doesn’t talk about console sales, now it appears they’re not going to talk about Game Pass subscriptions anymore either.
So yes, I don’t think anyone can blame Larian for passing on a Game Pass launch here. And frankly I would be surprised to see many more high profile third party launches there (remember Outriders?) as opposed to Microsoft’s own offerings. We’ll see.
Read more from IGN here, which will be publishing a longer interview soon.
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