With Everspace 2 now in Early Access on Steam, fans of the series are wondering whether ROCKFISH Games will implement VR into the space shooter sequel.
The original Everspace was an early adopter of VR technology, adding VR support in 2017 for the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and OSVR. VR support was initially promised for Everspace in its early Kickstarter days.
However, the crowdfunding project for Everspace 2 was strangely quiet on Virtual Reality support, leaving fans of its VR mode worried that the feature had been canned.
So, what does the future hold for VR and Everspace 2? Let's find out.
Does Everspace 2 Early Access support VR?
As of the current moment, Everspace's sequel does not have VR support for any platform.
This has not been a topic the developer have shied away from online, with ROCKFISH posting a developer update in March 2020 included an explanation for VR's current omission.
In this post, ROCKFISH explained that creating a VR experience on top of the base Everspace would be a lot of work, citing "overhauling the UI, rebalancing the game, [and] optimizing to demanding VR specifications" as just some reasons for this.
As this work would take up a sizeable chunk or time and resources, ROCKFISH commented that it would not be able to justify spending this "exclusively on a feature for a comparatively small group of players."
It also noted the "major marketing challenges" of a VR mode. "We have seen non-VR players who ignore or hesitate to buy games with a VR tag," ROCKFISH said.
"On the other hand, quite a lot of VR players miss or have trouble altering graphic settings in games with optional VR support, resulting in negative reviews and complaints about performance issues in VR, which of course hurt overall sales."
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Will Everspace 2 support VR in the future?
Everspace's VR future looks quite mixed. While the developer gave various reasons for Everspace 2's lack of VR support, this could change in the future.
"We still haven’t decided if we will support VR at some point," ROCKFISH said. "Everspace 2 for VR is currently not on our list, but who knows what kind of deal might happen in the future…?"
As Everspace 2 has just entered Early Access now in 2021, following a delay from September 2020, we'd expect that it won't have any VR support until after the game leaves Early Access and launches fully in late 2021.
Specifically on PSVR, however, it's unlikely Everspace 2 will support the PlayStation headset. In the FAQs on Everspace 2's Kickstarter, ROCKFISH commented: "We tried to support PSVR in the predecessor but couldn't get close to mandatory 2x 60 FPS on the regular PS4. Can't comment on next-gen, but in case we do it will be a separate app, so we can optimize the experience for VR a 100%."
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