Sony exec: Hello Games is constantly updating No Man's Sky to bring it closer to original vision

midian182

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No Man’s Sky was always going to struggle under the weight of expectation. The hype surrounding it grew out of control as Hello Games founder Sean Murray embellished the game’s features in pre-release interviews, causing the disappointment of the final product to feel even worse.

But during a recent appearance on Live with YouTube Gaming, Sony Interactive Entertainment executive VP and COO, Shawn Layden, explained that Hello Games continues to work on the title as it attempts to bring NMS closer to the team’s original vision.

"They're still working on it," Layden said. "They're still updating it. They're trying to get it closer to what their vision was. And perhaps over time, it’ll reveal itself to be all that it can be […] you just don't get all the way there at the first go."

The Sony exec added that the company didn’t want to stifle developers' creativity by forcing them down a specific path.

No-one in development wants to say that they can’t do a thing, right? No-one wants to tell someone no, I can’t do that for you. People really try. Looking at different industries I’ve had the privilege of working in, the games industry is where everyone has the courage to say yes. They want to try and realize their ambition; they want to try and make that vision.

Following a long period of almost total silence, Hello Games’ Twitter account sent out a post in late October stating: “No Man’s Sky was a mistake.” It turned out to be a hack, but it was a sentiment many gamers agree with.

Murray has talked about DLC for NMS that will introduce new elements, perhaps bringing it closer to the game people expected. He originally said the downloadable content would be free, but later admitted this was “perhaps naïve.”

While introducing base-building and giant space freighters will no doubt bring more activities to No Man's Sky, it’s unlikely to be enough to satisfy the majority of people who bought the game. A massive overhaul and the introduction of multiplayer may be Hello's Games best way of saving NMS.

Back in September, No Man’s Sky was recording fewer than 1000 concurrent players on Steam. Hello Games would need to pull something special out of the bag for player numbers to return to those of launch week.

You can see the full YouTube Gaming interview with Shawn Layden in the video below.

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I own NMS through Steam and can say with certain confidence that there have been NO updates at all. So I call these people liars.
And I still enjoy the game.
 
Sony covering their asses. They did in part contribute to the hype. You don't give a brand new dev the Spotlight and you don't let them say what they want, especially when you are partnered with them.
 
I don't see a point anymore. The PR damage has been done. They would have to do something radical (change developer?) to even get me to consider that these updates are worth my time. That and livestreams of the gameplay to prove features are in (because no one trusts em anymore).
 
I stop playing shortly after the launch, but have since returned to the game and I'm really enjoying it now. I do hope they have some future updates coming because the foundation is there.

Regardless it should definitely have been cheaper and maybe gone up on Steam as a Early Access right from the start.
 
I don't see a point anymore. The PR damage has been done. They would have to do something radical (change developer?) to even get me to consider that these updates are worth my time. That and livestreams of the gameplay to prove features are in (because no one trusts em anymore).

im not sure if possible for this game, but to say it cant happen isnt true, FF14 was a complete mess, but after a complete rebuild "relm reborn" is a fan favorite and will likely eventually become the highest profiting game for Square enix (the previous was 11, the subscription model has worked well for them)
 
While I disagree with most people that the game is bad. It is actually a very good game, it is just not the coming of Christ like people were hoping. But does it do these few things:

1. Are there almost infinite worlds? Yep
2. Can you go from one world to another fairly quickly? Yep, you just need the parts and the resources to do it.
3. Is the amount of time you could take to do a bunch of tasks existing? Oh yeah, I have not really followed the main quest and have explored about 20 worlds so far and put in about 20 hours.
4. Does the game load fast and render in real time? Yeah, in fact although it sometimes scan loads weird I have yet to see it do a weird blur out or fail and the load times are non existant. I cannot say this small part how fun it makes things that you don't have to wait for load screens, EVER. Never in the game do you wait for loads that I can see.

What is kind of weird about the game:

1. Unless I am wrong it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to go back to where you were with a simple, taken for granted with modern games, database, config file, something to know where you were and go there. It is 'catalogged' but as far as I can see, and please CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG, you cannot click any way to get there. It is INFURIATING if you find an item early on for a gun that is a great price and lots of slots, you get resources and try to get back to the....
2. The markers to where you have been are not seen till you are STARING AT A PLACE. What good does tagging anything matter if you cannot get to it?
3. What is it with English people and holding buttons down? Peter Molyneaux does this crap too in the Fable games. Why in the world does everything have to be held down to the point of annoyance in this game? Oh you want to do that, no you don't click, you click and hold. Even when accepting an A or B choice in dialogue you hold down the button. This game's developers could seriously make the game faster by allowing this part to speed up.
4. Although you don't wait for loads per say, when you do the warping there is a lot of time waiting to get to the next system.

I got the game a month ago for the PS4, updated it once and have seen zero updates since then. I would love the game enough to give it maybe even a higher grade if they just made a way to backtrack easier. The game is amazingly fun if you go into it with an open mind instead of: "It did 8 of 10 things it claimed and 2 were not there and I hate this game even though I have never played it!". Judging from sales alone, half the people that talk trash on the game have never played it.
 
Good/bad is objective statement.. when you have staff out there stating what they are doing and then the final product does not do that , it is an issue.. and most of the delays were contributed to putting more content in to the universe and they them selves said an empty void would not be much fun for most people.. and what they release a fairly empty Universe with none of the interaction they promised .. moral being it could have been the best atmospheric game ever, and it remains that it is not what they promised, and all signs point to intentional deception
 
"The hype surrounding it grew out of control..."

Wonder who's fault....

They should really just abandon this, and just start working on No Man's Sky II. Hell, rename it something else entirely. That will get more people to play it again. (EDIT: UNLESS YOU'VE BOUGHT IT, THEN I GUESS YOU WANT UPDATES. I think most people have returned it or pirated it)

Most people who have tried it, are done with it. I've played it, I liked it. I'm done with it.

These articles keep coming...
 
I own NMS through Steam and can say with certain confidence that there have been NO updates at all. So I call these people liars.
And I still enjoy the game.

There have been updates, but the term update is probably wrong for this situation. More like patches. About 6 patches now and not a single new feature added.
 
There have been updates, but the term update is probably wrong for this situation. More like patches. About 6 patches now and not a single new feature added.

Yes, you're correct. I was more referring to new "features".
 
I own NMS through Steam and can say with certain confidence that there have been NO updates at all. So I call these people liars.
And I still enjoy the game.

I was done with this game after about 10 hours of gameplay and honestly, I can't believe I lasted that long. In my opinion, the game is complete boring trash and was nothing that it was described to be by the developers, prior to its launch. They are working on this game far too late. The amount of active users has nearly flatlined and there will be no way of bringing them back. Far too many mistakes have been made and the trust in this company by most users is essentially gone. In my opinion, they should abandon the game all together at this point and move on to something else. Learn from the mistake they made and start something new.
 
Approximately when will these socalled updates be out that make the game what it was meant to be as all I've seen a bug patches and some of them didn't completely fix the problems they purported they did
 
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