The multiplayer starship simulator Star Trek: Bridge Crew sounds pretty great, but as we pointed out in our hands-on with it earlier this year, coming up with the three VR-equipped friends needed to play the thing is a real challenge for most of us. And since VR continues to not show signs of an imminent mass-market breakthrough, Ubisoft has done what it probably should have done in the first place by patching out the requirement.
The update makes some graphical improvements and incorporates "enhanced" support for Windows Mixed Reality, but the elimination of the VR requirement is obviously the big move here. Importantly, Bridge Crew is cross-platform across the board, so PC, PS4, VR, and non-VR owners will all be able to play together.
Hopefully, this change means that Ubisoft isn't ready to abandon Bridge Crew to an unhappy fate, if one approached. VR may be cool, but its position as a standalone platform is still tenuous. Senior creative director David Votypka also teased "additional cool things" coming to the game in the future, but we'll have to wait to find out what those things actually are.
