Who would have thought that a game panned by critics and players alike three years ago would grow to be such a phenomenon today? No Man’s Sky has gone from gaming’s pariah to its bleeding edge with its latest update, Beyond, which is set to drop any day now.
Beyond follows on No Man Sky’s Next update by adding even more features to an already jam-packed sci-fi survival and space simulation game. The biggest feature, and the one that fans have all been clamoring for, is virtual reality. VR support is the big selling point for Beyond, and players can’t wait to experience the immersion that comes from a tiny screen strapped to their foreheads.
VR support was announced last March with a tentative release date of sometime in the summer of 2019. Now that summer’s here, we’re all waiting for Beyond to drop, but we haven’t heard anything from developer Hello Games.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways to find out when a game will release. Hello Games also told us that Beyond would get an exclusive PlayStation 4 re-release, and that means it needs regulatory approval from various national regulators. One of those happens to be the Australian regulator, and a Twitter account dedicated to announcing new approvals just tweeted out that No Man’s Sky Beyond got its rubber stamp last week.
We can thank Reddit user yesbkizzz over on the No Man’s Sky unofficial subreddit for that info. There still isn't a solid date, but this gives us a clue that Beyond could release any day now.
It’s also surprising to note that we almost didn’t get Beyond at all. In an interview with Lad Bible, co-creator Sean Murray (who has no relation to the writer of this very article) said that Hello Games had planned to stop at Next, but instead kept going.
"We genuinely thought Next was it, and from there we'd just do small updates, to keep the game running as it should be," Murray said. "We weren't going to sunset the game, exactly, but we were happy with it. But then, two things happened."
First, Next did way better than anyone expected, which meant a lot of new players were experiencing No Man's Sky for the very first time. Second, Murray explained that Hello Games really wanted to explore the limits of what their game could do.
So, is Beyond the last we’ll see of No Man’s Sky?
"Not as much planning goes into the future as we'd like, really - so while we thought we were done with Next, we weren't. And after Beyond, we don't know what we'll do."