Crusader Kings III: Bringing the biggest console expansion yet to Xbox and PlayStation 

Crusader Kings III is one of the deepest strategy games on the market—a medieval grand strategy sandbox where players scheme, conquer, and build a dynasty across centuries of history. At Room 8 Group we’re charged with developing and expanding the game’s console edition in partnership with Paradox—bringing the game’s intricate PC play to the joypads of Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. 

Released together as a single package on May 11, Roads to Power and Wandering Nobles are the largest and most feature-rich expansion we’ve ported for the series to date.

The challenge 

Every Crusader Kings III expansion arrives as a PC build designed for keyboard and mouse. Nothing ships with gamepad support. That means every new mechanic, UI screen, and interaction path needs rethinking for console from the ground up—all while preserving the depth and nuance that makes the game so compelling for its legion of dedicated players. 

2024’s Roads to Power raised the bar significantly for the series with an entirely new Administrative Government system modeled on the Byzantine Empire. This was an expansion densely packed with interactions and layered management screens that worked naturally with a mouse but had no obvious equivalent on a controller. Alongside it came the Landless character mode; a fundamentally new way to play that untethers the player from any territory, requiring reworked map navigation and new UI patterns. 

All of this needed to fit within the memory budget of Xbox Series S—just 8.5 gigabytes, a fraction of what the PC version targets—while also supporting Polish localization, a console-exclusive feature that has never been backported to PC. 

If that wasn’t challenge enough, the timeline was tight: eight to nine months from integration start to release, with Wandering Nobles to be developed and delivered as part of the very same package.

What we did 

Took full ownership of the console experience 

Operating autonomously and checking in with Paradox at scheduled points during development, we used the PC Steam version as our base. That meant we inherited the visual style, game mechanics, and core logic, but the console-specific UI, UX, and technical decisions were all ours to make. 

“We have our own UI and UX changes that are console-specific and have never been backported to the PC game,” said C++ Game Engine Lead Engineer Artem Yakovliev, who led the project. “We’re free to propose and implement features we consider useful for players—usability improvements, gamepad navigation, technical stabilization. We agree the major decisions with Paradox, but otherwise we run our own roadmap.”

Redesigned dense PC interfaces for gamepad 

Crusader Kings III is a game of windows—players open screens, navigate menus, manage characters, and issue commands through layered UI built around mouse interaction. 

“On PC it’s just small icons and you click, click, click, and there are many windows you can open,” says Elena Stalyhva, UI/UX Designer on the project.

“We can’t use those patterns on console. So we created new windows, split single interfaces into multiple screens, and used radial menus to consolidate interactions—making everything easily navigable with a gamepad.” 

“The Administrative Government’s management interface, for example, sits in a right-side menu on PC,” Elena explains. “We moved it into a radial menu on the character screen—I designed the solution, proposed it to Paradox, and we refined it together. Entry points were a recurring challenge too: on PC, character portraits were surrounded by clickable buttons, but on console the map is the primary view, and every feature needed a clear path through button inputs.” 

Fit an expanding game into 8.5 gigabytes 

The PC version targets machines with 16 or 32 gigabytes of RAM. Xbox Series S however caps title memory at just 8.5 gigabytes, and Microsoft requires simultaneous release on both Series S and Series X consoles. 

“We needed to develop approaches that would allow us to gain gigabytes of memory, which wasn’t easy” said Artem. “Solving that meant a combination of code optimization strategies, asset data reduction, and some compromises on texture quality. We also saved several hundred megabytes just by preventing the streaming of unnecessary and redundant data for map icons and points of interest.” 

“With each expansion adding content and mechanics, we’ve found the memory challenge compounds,” Artem adds. “so it’s not been a one-time fix—more an ongoing engineering effort, as we’ve taken ownership of porting more and more of Crusader Kings III’s content.” 

Smoothly delivered two expansions as one package 

“The team, which was typically seven to ten developers, two to four dev QAs, a project manager, and me, managed the dual delivery through careful planning,” explains Artem.

“As the first expansion approached submission, the majority transitioned to integrating the second, while a small group continued stabilization and certification support. We have very low overhead when handling both at the same time—we weren’t splitting the team in half, but doing a smooth transition from one expansion to the next.” 

“QA ran as two layers,” Artem adds. “Our internal dev QA team handled daily build validation and feature testing, while an external QA team supplied by Paradox performed additional verification as builds approached certification. We also developed in-game validation tools and maintained build pipelines for Sony and Microsoft compliance—tools that we’ve carried forward to each subsequent expansion.” 

The result 

After the previous DLC the team ported, Legends of the Dead, Elena and the team were excited to see players’ reactions. 

“They were so excited,” says Elena. “We have a job to do, so we don’t feel pressure from outside, we just focus on the task in hand. But seeing the response was so rewarding. The fans were so happy.” 

That feedback motivated the team to go outside of scope—adopting features from older DLCs that had never been ported to console, and proposing improvements that weren’t in the original brief. 

The community response to Roads to Power and Wandering Nobles has continued that pattern. On the Paradox forums, fans even credited us by name: 

| “Room 8 you gave this game the greatest comeback ever you lovely people”

| “Both at the same time is quite a surprise! Thank you Room 8.” 

| “-200 stress from reading this great news. Thank you room 8 for your hard work.”

“Both ourselves and Paradox pay close attention to reactions online, so we see most of the community feedback,” said Elena. “And when the fans are happy, Paradox is happy too. Which is obviously what we’re striving for as an external developer—excited players, and happy clients.” 

Scope of work 

• Full console port ownership and ongoing co-development 
• UI/UX design and adaptation for gamepad (radial menus, navigation flows, entry points, and all new windows adaptation) 
• Memory optimization for Xbox Series S (8.5GB budget) 
• Engine and game-level performance optimization  
• Console-exclusive Japanese localization support  
• Dual-expansion delivery planning and execution  
• Dev QA (build validation, smoke testing, feature testing)  
• In-game validation tooling and build pipeline maintenance  
• Platform certification and compliance (Sony, Microsoft) 

Looking for a partner who can own your console experience end to end? 

From UI redesign and memory optimization to certification and ongoing expansion delivery, our team builds and maintains the Crusader Kings III console edition across major releases. 

If you need a co-development partner who can own a console port and keep delivering as your game grows, let’s talk.