No Man's Sky Celebrates Fifth Anniversary With 17th (!) Free Expansion

Hello Games announces the Frontiers expansion, due 2021

A screenshot from Hello Games' No Man's Sky.
Screenshot: Hello Games

Developer Hello Games celebrates No Man’s Sky’s fifth anniversary this week by not only looking back on the history of the game, but by giving us a tease of what’s coming next.

No Man’s Sky launched on August 7, 2016, in a notably tragic state. But expansions over the years turned the indie game’s shaky start into a comeback story for the gaming history books. The free updates haven’t just been small tweaks with a bit of new content sprinkled in. Hello Games has transformed No Man’s Sky completely, adding in now-core gameplay elements, overhauling its visuals, and allowing crossplay.

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The latest update, No Man’s Sky: Frontiers, now adds...something. We’re not exactly sure what yet as the reveal trailer and blog post didn’t offer many details, but we know that it will be available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation VR. The expansion is “coming soon.” Hello Games founder Sean Murray says, “The next step on that journey is not far off.” So, hopefully, he’s not taking too many liberties with the definition of “soon.”

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The life of No Man’s Sky truly has been a journey, both for Hello Games and the players alike. Murray noted that the team had an average size of six members throughout development and had 15 members at launch. Its comeback and success story was hard-fought and required consistent quality improvements, something even the harshest early critics would likely agree Hello Games has delivered on.

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“It hasn’t always been easy, but the thing that has been our guiding star throughout has been the players and the community,” Murray wrote in the fifth-anniversary blog post.

Normally, I chalk up musing about listening to players and the community to PR talking points, but it’s unlikely that No Man’s Sky would be where it is today without doing so. Sony also released a look back at No Man’s Sky throughout the last five years, detailing the game’s morphings from expansion to expansion.

“In some ways, [Frontiers] is just another update,” Murray said, “but in other ways, it’s a missing piece of the sci-fi fantasy that we’ve always wanted to add, and very fitting for our fifth anniversary.”

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