Earlier this console generation, developer Hello Games revealed their ambitious open-world space adventure game known as No Man’s Sky. The game promised a vast, nearly infinite procedurally generated filled with wonders like exotic creatures, battles against space pirates, and a universe like no other that was filled with other players. Essentially, Hello Games was gearing No Man’s Sky up to be the biggest and most ambitious game to date with a team of only a few dozen people.
Of course, we all know the end result. The game launched exclusively on PS4 and PC and was a historic disaster that still gets mocked nearly two years after its initial release. Hello Games and its golden boy, Sean Murray, quickly went dark for many months, player counts dropped significantly, and it stirred up all sorts of controversy with Sony and organizations that regulate how products are advertised.
After things settled down, Hello Games announced a free update that added vehicles, base building, and more. As time has gone on, the game has been quietly evolving with new story content and various other additions which have sucked some players back in. It has proven it has legs but the legs are fairly small at the moment given the damage done at launch.
Hello Games may have one last shot at getting the game back to a higher status, though. This summer, the studio will finally release the space exploration game on Xbox One in a digital and physical release published by 505 Games. It’ll be the same game we’ve had access to since August 2016 with all current updates and future ones, Xbox One X users will even benefit from an enhanced version with 4K resolution and HDR. No release date other than the summer timeframe has been announced
As for the future of No Man’s Sky, a new update is coming this summer as well. The update which has simply been titled “Next” is being kept under wraps (they seem to have learned their lesson about talking too much) but is supposed to have some pretty big surprises.
“This is our biggest update so far, and something we’ve been working ridiculously hard on. And after its release, we’ll continue to support No Man’s Sky with significant and free content updates on Xbox One. Next has a lot we’re going to surprise people with and I can’t wait until we can share more.” said Sean Murray.
“We called this update ‘Next,’ because it’s an important next step on a longer journey for us and the community,” said Murray when speaking to Polygon. “We’ve been working our socks off on this and it’s by far our biggest update so far. It will be free to existing players, and we’ll continue to support No Man’s Sky in this way for the foreseeable future.”
“We’ve learned a lot over the last few years, faster than we would have liked,” added Murray. “I’d love to avoid talking completely and just make things people can play, but we knew this was going to leak anyway, and I think it’s news that should make a lot of folks happy.”
No Man’s Sky is out now on PS4 and PC.
