Along with its recent release date reveal, Baldur's Gate 3 developer, Larian Studios, confirmed that the game would be coming to PlayStation 5 at launch, however, an Xbox announcement was conspicuously absent, which led many to assume this was another ever-so-common PlayStation third-party console exclusive, but Larian has just confirmed that the problem is actually "technical issues."
Via a post from the developer's Community Manager on the game's subreddit, Larian Studios stated that there is "no platform exclusivity" preventing them from releasing Baldur's Gate 3 on Xbox. The team is in fact working on an Xbox version and has been "for some time," but they've opted not to confirm it because there's an issue with the title's split-screen co-op mode.
The post reads, "We don’t like announcing anything until we’re ready, because we don’t want to get people's hopes up until we’re sure we can deliver." Furthermore, the studio states that there's still hope for an Xbox version to release day and date with the other platforms, "should that be a technical possibility."
It is currently unclear what is causing Larian Studios to have issues with Xbox and not PlayStation, as they're supposed to be mostly equivalent in terms of hardware and performance power. Some fans speculate that the issue could be the result of the Xbox Series S, which is slightly underpowered compared to its Series X counterpart, but this is purely conjecture and likely won't ever be explicitly explained.
Baldur's Gate 3 is a very highly anticipated title within the tactical RPG space. The series' last game, Baldur's Gate 2 released all the way back in 2000. It's been abandoned since, given that its original developer, BioWare, moved on to other things, mainly Mass Effect.
The franchise was then picked up by Larian Studios, which is most known for Divinity: Original Sin II, a 2017 tactical RPG that many consider to be one of the best in the history of the genre.
Larian contacted Wizards of the Coast, the owners of the IP, and specifically requested to make the sequel to this beloved franchise. The game has been out in early access in 2020, but won't see its official release (nor its console versions) until August 31, later this year.