No Man's Sky gets its latest update this week in the form of cross-platform multiplayer. The update arrives tomorrow, June 11, the same day it hits Xbox Game Pass for both console and PC.
The once maligned space-faring adventure has been on an upward trajectory for a few years now, releasing major and minor updates several times per year following its deflating launch in 2016. While the Xbox team delivered the Game Pass news, it was the face of Hello Games, Sean Murray, who revealed the crossplay compatibility update himself in a blog post on the team's website.
Whilst [the move to Game Pass] exciting itself, we’ve been busily working on something else in secret for the last few months. Something to allow everyone in the community to benefit from the influx of new players that Game Pass brings.
Do you have a friend on another gaming system with whom you’ve always wanted to explore the great unknown? A legendary base you’ve seen videos of but never been able to visit? A mission that you think would be great to play with friends on other platforms?
We are excited to be able to announce that, starting tomorrow, PlayStation 4 players, Xbox One players and PC players will all be able to explore, journey, survive, build, and trade together. Excitingly, No Man’s Sky is joining what is at the moment a fairly small group of games which support cross-platform multiplayer.
Like many games that have gone crossplay lately, No Man's Sky will allow you to team up with specific people and encounter random players from other platforms in shared hub spaces like Space Anomalies, in space, or on planets. If you bump into a new player and their name includes a controller icon rather than the icon of your played platform, you'll know you've met someone from the mysterious extraterrestrial worlds known as other PlayStation, Xbox, or PC.
There's also a new friends feature which allows two players to make friends quickly while they're together. Players will also be designated a unique code which they can share with others to be added as friends even when someone is away from the game.
Several other bug fixes and quality of life updates arrive in tomorrow's patch as well. You can read the full patch notes on the website.
