If this is the only way to Baldur's Gate 3, i'm gonna assume we're gonna have a really thorny and shitty road up ahead.
Anyway, if this works, i am curious to see what can they do by themselves.
They can't even animate something on their own, that's how small they are as a company. They admitted basically that in order to get BG3 this BG:EE needs to sell well, and since they can do so little with BG:EE due to contracts and small budget, aren't they basically admitting it's a cash grab?
Nostalgia for Baldur's Gate will probably cause a lot of folks to buy the game believing it will be something better than the original and more convenient, and arguably 18$ is not THAT big of a price, considering they won't get the whole sum themselves, but still, i don't know what they think they're doing when they are so limited.
The chances of BG, that sold around 5 million copies throughout its history (all games), to sell well today on Macs, iPads and PC, without any kind of visual enhancement, after 14 years, are rather low i'd say. If you want this to sell well so you potentially make BG3, well good luck.
I am thinking of 2 possibilities :
1) They are just trying to establish how much of the fan base is left and see if it's worthy to continue making isometric games in 2D.
2) Bioware wants to actually see that, so when and if it's time for BG3 to be made, Beamdog gets thrown out lol.