Everything Mick Gordon touches turns to gold would love to see him back for the OST and there is a crazy amount of options since KI released for guest characters with Xbox characters alone and a colossal pool to chose from when Activison acquisitions completes just give me the Queen of Blades in one of the seasons.

There's a difference between can and desire to do something, 343 could have absolutely done it if they wanted to but they chose to prioritise their resources elsewhere, they even left the door open for it to come later (it definitely won't but still doesn't change my point). They could get split-screen on Halo Infinite but as it's such a niche feature, they believe their resources are better spent elsewhere.

There seems to be this assumption that Larian is this tiny indie studio, they aren't. They are a massive RPG developer, one of the biggest in the industry with over 450 employees and 6 studio locations across the world with a 30% investment from Tencent. I do believe that if they really focused on it that they could get split-screen working on Series S but I believe they're prioritising PS/PC because it makes more sense due to Starfield.

The feature parity is there because Series S is sold as a next gen console to consumers which would have parity with Xbox in all but resolution and framerate, if they removed the parity then they'd be saying "fuck you" to any Series S owner and open the doors up to every developer just ripping features from Series S. Like it or not, Series S is here and stabbing those consumers in the back only 3 years in would be a disaster PR move.

Is likewise, Sony or Larian saying fuck you to PS owners because the PC version launches a month before the PS version? Lol.

That Resetera comment is quite literally not outdated, it represents a very real consumer view and one that shouldn't be ignored, we are in a luxurious position to be in more financially stable countries so fuck everyone else in a poorer country that is able to game thanks to Series S, right? No, not right. PS having a similar price to Xbox or outselling it doesn't change that, not everyone wants a PS.

Dude in a poorer country wants to play Starfield but doesn't have the funds for a powerful PC or Series X, Series S is there for them.

I'd hope they would have a large amount of the original Killer Instinct characters for launch, of course, but I think it'd be awesome if the first guest pack was like one character from each division, a character to represent Xbox Game Studios, a character to represent Bethesda and a character to represent Activision-Blizzard.

It feels fairly obvious to say who would represent each division, so instead maybe, who would you want as a representative of each division? I'm conflicted because I want Chief but Doomguy as well and I feel for the first pack, they'd be too similar to each other (both shooter guys wearing armour hiding their face, Lol).

Lets make it a question.

Killer Instinct Guest Character Pack #1

• Xbox Game Studios - ?
• Bethesda Softworks - ?
• Activision Blizzard - ?

Some purists hate guest characters though, Lol.

Ain't that cheating?

All fair in my mind. They need something to help promote the new game because that movie ain't it.

My guess on the issues with BG3 is that the game works great solo but become too taxing on the memory with coop. Either on bandwith or pool size.

It might be that they don't want to create another sets of lower quality assets for the Series S. Using lower quality assets is common in split screen and may even be used with Ps5 and Series X but it might be so that this easy path with Series S push the quality under a thresold to which they are not willing to go for experience sake and as a result scramble to find alternative solutions with various optimisations.
Or something alone this line.

We know the Series S have ample headrooms while targeting 1/4 of series X resolutions (output and assets). But this is the easy and lazy path as those headrooms can be used to create a better experience and that's where normal porting struggle and optimisation hit.

So to me this sound more like Larian is actualy putting in efforts and trying to get the best experience possible on the Series S which they might have underestimated and started too late and just need more time.

All this plus there's no rush to get it on Xbox with Starfield right there, they literally moved it forward on PC to avoid Starfield so it stands to reason that they would have made attempts to avoid Starfield on Xbox as well. So I think they're "happy/fine" with missing the Xbox launch on Starfield week and will take their time, give themselves some distance between it and Starfield and launch it late in 2023 or very early in 2024.

Best case scenario, it launches into Game Pass on Xbox due to the delay as the genre is already niche on consoles, a late port would be even smaller. In the meantime, they're probably enjoying some easy marketing because Baldur's Gate 3 is now dragged into the console wars and a bunch of Sony fans who never had any interest in the game are now interested in it and talking about it because it launches the same date as Starfield, Lol.

I think there needs to be a balance between guest, returning and new characters in any fighter as guests can be cool but they can also eat up the spots of new original characters.

• Xbox Game Studios - Chief
• Bethesda Softworks - Todd Howard
• Activision Blizzard - Sarah Kerrigan