The Latest No Man's Sky Patch Includes Some Switch Improvements

I have to hop into this game at some point, I heard that it's incredible, especially in VR.

I think I'll wait for the Nintendo 64 version though

I was talking about this with a friend who's still working in the industry, and he brought up how No Man's Sky is just a complete anomaly when it comes to post release content.

How is it affording it? The game bombed at launch, has never seen sustained sales. It floats around 10-20k concurrent players, which is a pretty poor total, and even it's ports had lack luster sales reception.

And yet point to a game with better post launch support. 11 free expansions, 5 major updates, and constant tech supports and patches.

Even insanely successfully games rarely get 7 years of support. It just blows my mind, in the best possible way.

Hat's off.

Can't wait to play this on my RTX4090FE ultrawide

@RobynAlecksys Oh my goodness, how have you been holding a grudge over a video game for seven years? Worse, you're simultaneously saying people who like this game "aren't real gamers" whatever that means.

Either get over it or stop bothering and insulting people for being interested in a video game just because a game didn't live up to your standards nearly a decade ago.

Nobody should be ashamed for enjoying something like No Man's Sky. Unbelievable.

@RobynAlecksys And just going to click 'ignore' on this idiocy.

Got this recently on PC and Switch, and have been hopping back and forth between them. The Switch port is incredible. I thought the pre-Echoes version was great on Switch, and I started playing just before Echoes. And then Echoes dropped; jeez... the leap in visual fidelity is immense. Genuinely impressive.

Honestly, the Switch version is fantastic to play. Loving the game.

@HotGoomba

And what a great message to send to developers. If you're game isn't 100% up to expectation on release abandon it. It doesn't matter if you spend 7 years trying to make it better for the people who bought it, we're still going to hate you forever. No path to redemption.

And believe me, this is something that actually gets brought up when talking about post launch support. It sucks.

@RobynAlecksys What is a “real gamer”?

I bought the game at launch but I just started playing after TotK. It's amazing! The made an impossible port! I didn't think the Witcher 3 would ever be topped on switch but hello games did it!

I've been playing this since release on ps4 and ny only complaint about this game is that I wish they'd allow ps5's dualsense controller use in psvr2. The psvr2 motion controls are pure cringe imo.

"Fixed an issue that was preventing all creatures from pooping." Lmao.

@RobynAlecksys "Real gamers" play whatever they find enjoyable, because that's what this hobby is about at the end of the day.

@FishyS

In 2021 Hello Games said the game had generated 78 million USD. That's a big number, but the average AAA game has a $60 to $80 million budget ... so it's not actually that hot "by AAA standards". Fantastic by small team standards though!

The game has been in development since 2012. So that's 7.8 million a year. Hello Games is 26 people, and while they have put out other small projects, the bulk of their money is coming from this title. So that's $300,000 a year for each FTE. That's an extremely tight budget, given that number has to include all your outsourced work and physical assets.

Dead Cells, to continue your example, has made 80 millionish, but that's a team of 8 and only took a year to develop because apparently Motion Twin can use literal magic. So closer to 1.5 million a year per FTE. That's a outstanding budget. Valve level, really.

I mean they are obviously pulling it off, and power to them. If anything it speaks to the teams ability to fund raise and keep costs low.

I'm intrigued on the memory optimisation bit, love the game but the terrain manipulation can be slow and painful, it would be amazing if they could sort that out

@FishyS

When a publisher speaks to "sales" they generally are talking about units sold to retail. "Sell through" is units sold to customers. Gets blurry with digital though.

I can't really say for any given studio on any given project, but as a rule from my experience, each "sales" will generate around 10% to 20% of your MRS as a developer. That accounts for discounts, spiff, distribution costs, and your publishers cut ... all that stuff. So 10 million units of a $60 game should generate $60 to $120 million in revenue for the developer. So that $78 million number I found made sense to me. Obviously I don't have any way to verify it though. I can't even source the interview.

That 10 million number gets really wired because of Game Pass as well. Most game report a Game Pass download as a "sale" because Microsoft pays them per-download. That's ... maybe the case here?

Best I can tell the game was tracking around 6 million sales in 2020. The idea that they moved 4 million units of a 5 year old game between then and the 10 million announcement is ... unlikely. But stranger things have happened!

But bottom line the game has obviously been a success, and it's fantastic that they are choosing to use that success to reward the people who stuck it out by making this product better. I also personally really enjoyed it for a good amount of time.

@RobynAlecksys Tjeezus! Yes he lied, like every darn other CEO of every other Game Studio constantly lies and oversell their games.

The difference is that major studios just move on to their next game and rinse, repeat the same marketing tactics over and over again and keep getting away with it.

At least to huge credit to Sean Murray, is that he owned up to it, his overselling his game and not delivering on some of it's promised features.
He owned up to it, by continuing development and releasing free updates and expansions without charging for it.

If you want to be angry. Be angry at the big gaming studios releasing unfished games at full price + Cash shop and loot(gamble) boxes. Fleecing gamers at every turn for more money! Selling premium editions for over 100 bucks, just to play the game 3 days earlier and so on!

@RobynAlecksys Are you joking or trolling? Because you can't be serious.

I would like to see a video comparing the improved graphics, it's the only thing holding me back from buying this game

@Bl4ckb100d
https://youtu.be/dR2fNkab5Vc?si=8bx1D9bulMeTLbuC

I was amazed by the sharper look, Echoes is a very good update. And they want to improve it even more? That‘s really great.

@Synecdoche What is a “real gamer”?

Clearly a miserable little pile of secrets.

Just amazing. I understand early adopters way back then being upset at the state of the original game, but for someone like me who only experienced it for the first time on Switch, I can say that Hello Games deserves much respect for its efforts.

Can't wait to jump back into it after I finish Tears of the Kingdom.

@vanYth thanks for the link!

I hope they rerelease on the Super Nintendo Switch (it’s never gonna be Pro - which works for Apple’s Pro consumers not gamers!).

I haven’t bought this game yet, but if they update it for next gen with all content, that would be great (free upgrade or small fee for those already bought would be fair I reckon)

@Synecdoche and what are the practical benefits of being one? The same ephemeral stuff that comes with having the so-called (and so variously defined) "good taste"? All these statuses really tend to demand way more than they give in return.

This is how you do a great port! Love how they keep improving it. Hats of.

The only reason I haven't played No Man's Sky on Switch yet is because I still have some really big games to play.

“Fixed an issue that was preventing all creatures from pooping.”

I’m glad they got that crap fixed

I played the 'Voyagers Expedition' on Switch and definitely noticed an improvement in visuals due to the "bespoke implementation of AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 technology" &
"Dynamic Resolution Scaling has been added for Nintendo Switch", in version 4.4.

Generally the game just seems to use higher quality LOD files more consistently, giving a much nicer presentation. As an example, on previous versions when building bases on certain worlds, the metal flooring would often refuse to load beyond a fairly ugly LOD file (the stone floor looked a lot better, so I'd use that instead). Now it seems to load the higher quality assets each time, I built multiple bases across the various Expedition worlds.

____

However Freighters are still causing crashes for me on Switch (v4.4.4 and previous few patches). I'm not sure what's causing it, but if you buy or are given a Freighter, it runs fine during that initial visit, you can run around add rooms etc. But if you leave and come back later, or simply summon it to another system the game will crash.
So I've just been avoiding using Freighters entirely, as I'm worried that due to how the saves work, you could easily get stuck in a crash loop.

The next time there's a freighter pirate battle, I'll buy a new freighter and strip it back to a basic base. Then leave, warp to another system and then add one room at a time, until it starts crashing.