Ahead of No Man Sky‘s Nintendo Switch release on October 7, Hello Games boss Sean Murray sat down with Eurogamer to talk about the state of the game in 2022. Among other things, Murray also explained why the team chose to omit multiplayer and settlements from the Switch version, and the possibility of including these features later on.
Hello Games surprised everyone when it announced a Switch port of its space RPG No Man’s Sky back in February. A whole host of concerns surrounded the port, including the Switch’s ability to handle large-scale procedural generation, and the sheer size of the game.
Ultimately, the Switch proved itself able to handle most of the game’s technical demands:
I would have assumed and did assume [that the Switch could not handle large-scale procedural generation], [but] what’s really surprised me is that we haven’t done, we’ve managed to keep them in parity – you see a tree on the PlayStation 4 version or the PS5 version, and it’s there on Switch version… So the discoveries are shared, if you name a planet or whatever, those are the same.
However, the settlements introduced in last year’s Update 3.6 “FRONTIERS” were left out of the Switch version. Murray explained the omission as more of a realistic avoidance:
The most performance-intensive things… the very biggest constructs are something we wanted to sort of avoid on [the platform].
That same line of thought extends to why the team chose to not include multiplayer functionality in the Switch port: outside of technical constraints, Murray felt multiplayer was not as critical to the Switch’s handheld, on-the-go experience. At the same time, he didn’t rule out bringing these features to the Switch in the future:
Multiplayer in No Man’s Sky is important, I love it as a feature, it’s great… [but] it’s not our most important feature compared to other games that have multiplayer. A lot of people play No Man’s Sky effectively alone, single-player, and [Switch] is less focused on multiplayer as well, because of the nature that you’re playing it on a train, you’re playing on the toilet, out and about or in bed at night or whatever. Loads of people play multiplayer games on Switch… but it’s a smaller percentage, and so our attitude is release, and see how people interact with it, and see what’s important to them and react to that.
October 4 this year will be a special date for No Man’s Sky. Besides the Switch release, Update 4.0 and a physical edition of the PS5 version will both be releasing on the same date.
Update 4.0 brings the new Relaxed mode, revamps of the Survival mode and inventory, a new info portal, customized difficulty settings, and more. The update will be released across all platforms.
We’ll keep our readers updated as No Man’s Sky on the Switch nears release.
Source: Eurogamer
Please please please add multiplayer to the Nintendo Switch version of No Man’s Sky! No Man’s Sky is a wonderful game filled with super exiting elements, including: The Infinite number of planets you can visit, bargaining with merchants for their ships, and fighting space pirates in the dark vacuum of space. There’s only one thing that’s missing…….MULTIPLAYER!
imagine how much fun it would be to gather your friends together while you’re bounty hunting for other players throughout the endless galaxy! Not only do I think this game would make more money, but if multiplayer was highlighted it would probably be one of of the top games on switch. So, Please, if you guys from Hello Games get this review, I would love it if you took this idea into consideration. Thank you.
This game as multiplayer would be super good and good for streamers as a hub to meet them in a galaxy on a planet on a base. I see lots of good stuff from making this online on switch im bunkumpunktse on twitch i hope il see you guys in my base or my planet later when we can meet and stream together
Ok I under stand how the thought of keeping out multiplayer but in doing that you took away the ability to gain quicksilver for switch player so for instance say I wanted a void egg I can’t get one bc of the fact that I can’t get quicksilver to be able to
Ya I really hope multiplayer comes to switch along with settlements mainly multiplayer being able to trade resources and blueprints is a must some people can’t get lucky enough to get an easy run with our making e erythin easy by lowering the difficulty I played on playstation but now my system can only run any game for 3 hours before just shutting off so I got it for switch but didn’t know it had no multiplayer ya I saw it say 1 player but I played on ps4 so I didn’t think of it much and being able to see other bases the anomaly honestly they did great on playstation but not have multiplayer is boring I have friends I traversed with playstation now I can’t cuz my playstation won’t run it long and don’t have multiplayer for switch sucks huuuuu disappointed I am it would be great to bring in future updates
This is wrong, most of the players are Nintendo switch your kids and most of the kids want to play with their friends not play by themselves, or play with their parents.
My brother and I bought the game on the switch just so we could play the game together.. only to find out there is no multiplayer. I love this game I have it on 2 platforms now but multiplayer is a huge feature please consider adding it in the future.