No Man’s Sky NEXT Multiplayer Update: Have they finally redeemed itself?

No Man’s Sky will be getting the No Man’s Sky NEXT Update on July 24th, which will finally add the multiplayer functionality. The game will also be released on Xbox One consoles at the same time.

The developers have been playtesting multiplayer functionality since half a year now, and they’re now going to be releasing this update 2 months from now. They’re promising that people will finally be able to explore the vast universe with friends and even come across random players.

The lack of this feature along with many other features caused insane chaos back in 2016.

Here’s a little bit of backstory.

Hello Games released No Man’s Sky quite a while ago back in late 2016. The developers promised a lot of exciting & fun elements when they showcased No Man’s Sky, but a lot of those elements were absolutely not present at all in the final game.

They promised interaction with other players (multiplayer), planetary physics, ring planets, space stations, and much more – VG247 had a big list posted of all the things missing. The released game even had a ton of bugs and glitches.

The aftermath of this was the game getting a rating of ‘Overwhelmingly Negative’ on Steam and a ton of Internet Outrage. The creators were even sued on account of false advertising allegations, but the charges were dropped later on.

To conclude, the game was not at all worth the $60 USD Price.

Have they redeem themselves?

After releasing the Version 1.1 – Foundation Update in November 2016, they also released a statement telling the community, “Positive or negative feedback, you have been heard and that will truly help to make this a better game for everyone.”

The game has released a ton of updates after this and a LOT has improved in No Man’s Sky. Here’s a breakdown and overview of the major updates that took place –

The Foundation Update (v1.1) added 3 game modes, base and other structure building abilities, teleport, ship inventory, resource growing, automated mining, and a lot of bug fixes.

The Path Finder Update (v1.2) added new vehicles allowing for easier exploration, better and more options for base building, a photo mode for beautiful screenshots, a new spaceship, weapon improvements and customizability, a new game mode, and amazing visual improvements with PS4 Pro players getting 4K and HDR Support.

The Atlas Rises Update (v1.3) added a full galactic trading system, online co-op mode (not very functional though!), new planet types, inventory management improvements, ship summoning abilities, new scavenging missions, highly improved ancient portals, and last but also very significant – 30 hours of story content with introduction of an interdimensional alien race.

And that brings us to the present. The next major update is  said to be the BIGGEST update from Hello Games ever: No Man’s Sky NEXT. As said before, the update will be executed on July 24th and will have multiplayer functionality and also the release of the game on Xbox One consoles. Graphical Improvements are also expected, and it’ll be exciting to see what Hello Games could do with Xbox One X’s enormous power.

So, have they redeemed themselves? Not yet. The past updates have vastly improved the game, but many still don’t think the $60 price tag is justified. The No Man’s Sky NEXT update landing in the middle of the summer is surely very promising, and could finally mean that the game has redeemed itself. Also, the developers released a statement recently in which they said they’ll continue to work on game updates. What started out as the most dissappointing game of 2016 could be one of the best games ever of 2018, but only time will tell.