Subnautica partnering with Panic Button to speed up Xbox One development

Subnautica has been in development for years now and many Xbox One owners were frustrated by the fact that it's still a broken experience on Xbox Game Preview. Luckily, the developer is partnering with Panic Button Games to speed up development of the console port. You might recognize Panic Button from the recent Nintendo Switch ports of Doom and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.

The developer issued the following statement on its website.

Subnautica has been in development on Xbox One for quite a while now. We're painfully aware of how long you've been waiting for us to finish the game. We've struggled to deliver updates quickly... Subnautica is a... complex piece of software. Lots of nuanced interactions with the host hardware need to be... rebuilt. Performance is a huge challenge... We were not moving fast enough, so we decided to... bring in outside help. We've partnered with Panic Button Games to finish Subnautica on Xbox One. Panic Button know consoles inside out. They have lots of experience bringing big games to consoles... As usual, we won't promise any dates... We are sorry it has taken so long to deliver updates.

Hopefully the final version will hit Xbox One soon. In our review of the PC build, we said "a game full of liquid is a difficult selling point on its own, but throw in base building, meaningful progression and a feeling of being way out of one's depth, and it all makes for quite the experience."

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Asher Madan

Asher Madan handles gaming news for Windows Central. Before joining Windows Central in 2017, Asher worked for a number of different gaming outlets. He has a background in medical science and is passionate about all forms of entertainment, cooking, and antiquing.

2 Comments
  • It's a fun game. I stopped playing it on my PC only because I was overtaxing the system. If they can optimize it for Xbox One X, I'll buy it again.
  • I play this on my PC in Oculus VR and it is so scary when you swim around and see big scary fishy. I am really scarred when swimming deep in the sea weed. Its just scary on the surface looking down.. Its so scary... lol.. but I love it.. Also Skyrim in VR is scary when fighting giant spiders that are bigger then you.. VR is pretty scary.. lol..