Subnautica: Below Zero released in full this week and, while the sequel ditches official VR support, its developers may look at it again in the future.
Project Lead David Kalina said as much in an interview with Shack News this week. “People really dug the VR in the first game but it was– we definitely cut a lot of corners there,” Kalina said. “So I think to some degree it was just a decision we made that it wasn’t the right time to double down on it and maybe it’s something we’ll look at again in the future but it’s not presently there.”
As Kalina said, the original Subnautica did indeed have full VR support, but it wasn’t in the best shape. Ditching that support for Below Zero somewhat came down to the current size of the VR market.
“I don’t love having to be like “It’s fundamentally a business decision” but the market is still not totally there,” Kalina continued. “We’re seeing success stories and more– just on the hardware side the popularity of the Quest 2, it does seem like there’s still appetite for content. But putting an emphasis on it requires more people and I think it’s also important to our studio that we stay relatively small.”
And, either way, there’s already a pretty great VR mod for Below Zero you can try on PC. We gave it a go earlier this week. We’d definitely like to see the developers return to implement full VR support in the future but, for now, the mod is a great alternative.
