Progress on Resuming Xbox One Updates

Update 24 Jul 2017: It looks like Xbox One will receive a “3 in 1” update, though we can’t commit to a date.

Subnautica on Xbox One has not been updated in an unacceptably long time. We’re painfully aware of this fact, and working hard to resume updates as soon as possible.

Previously, we discussed the reason for the delays, and made reference to “The Bug”. This bug was a major hurdle stopping us from updating Subnautica on Xbox One.

We can now say, with great relief that The Bug is dead. We have Subnautica’s latest updates, Silent Running and Voice of the Deep, running on our Xbox One development machines.

It will still be some time before we can resume updates. Even after squashing the The Bug, we are dealing with the following issues:

Xbox Specific Update Issues

Each Subnautica update needs to be tuned specifically for the Xbox One. Silent Running and Voice of the Deep each introduced some issues that appear only on Xbox One. Now that we have the game running again, we need to address those issues. This is a normal process and nothing to worry about too much.

Performance Regression

Squashing The Bug required deep and invasive surgery in Subnautica’s rendering system (the bits of the game that produce graphics). This surgery has resulted in a regression (a step backwards) in performance on Xbox One.

Performance on Xbox One is already well below par, and we would consider it utterly unacceptable to release an update that reduces it further.

We are doing a great deal of work on performance more broadly, the benefits of which we hope will start to show up in the Steam version of Subnautica over the coming months. Those benefits will also flow through to the Xbox One version of the game once we get updates back in sync between Xbox and Steam.

Update Timeframe

We can’t accurately predict a timeframe. In game development, some things that you think will be quick take weeks, and some things you think will be slow take hours. There is too much uncertainty to be able to predict a timeframe.

What is for sure is that we are working hard, and will release an update ASAP.

Update Content

The next update for Xbox One will contain both the Silent Running and Voice of the Deep update. Like the Precursor + Castles & Coffee update, this will be a “2 in 1” update.

Thanks for sticking with us. We know you’ve been waiting too long and we can’t wait to get past these issues and resume delivering Subnautica updates.

– Hugh