No Man's Sky adding cross-platform multiplayer this week
Hello, spacefriends of all systems!
The spacetime barriers between systems will fall this week in No Man's Sky when cross-platform multiplayer arrives in a free update. Hello Games today announced Windows, Xbox, and PlayStation spacemen will be able to play together from Thursday the 11th. The sandbox space potter 'em up will arrive on Xbox Game Pass tomorrow too, both for PC and Xbone, so you might get to mingle with a whole lot more spacepals.
Spacemen will be able to form cross-platform parties in-game or up-front. Folks from other systems will also appear in the "ambient" multiplayer, encountered on the Space Anomaly, amongst the stars, or planetside, same as usual. A new NMS-specific Friends system will let you find friends from any platform, either adding them when in a party or by sharing a unique code.
"A tremendous amount of work has gone into this update and the underlying technology and systems," chief greeter Sean Murray said in today's announcement. "We've moved to an entirely new networking architecture, with more flexibility for the future, allowing players to play together regardless of platform. I'm very proud of the team that has worked so hard to make this happen."
Tomorrow's patch will bring a few more fixes and changes. A voice-to-text transcription option is coming, and... automatically translating voice chat? Now that does sound fancy. VR support is updated with improved hand tracking, an option to see your body, your view appearing at your actual height, and other nice touches.
And yep, it'll be on Xbox Game Pass (and therefore the Windows 10 Store). It's coming to both the PC and Xbone versions of Microsoft's subscription service.
Continuing Hello's impressive commitment to a game that's now almost four years old, Murray says "we are continuing to work hard on new content updates, large and small for the future."