Summary
- On our 9th anniversary, the 6.0 update for No Man’s Sky, Voyagers, is available today, free to existing Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Game Pass players
- Players can now build their own large multi-crew starships, and are able to customize them inside and out.
- Fellow travellers can be invited to journey with you in your new starship. Why not set to autopilot and hang out as you watch the universe whizz by?
- Ship customisation is just one of a large number of quality of life updates ushered in by Voyagers, our biggest update of the year.
It’s been gratifying to see so many Xbox and Game Pass players return to the No Man’s Sky universe to take command of the all-new planetary settlements after the Beacon update a few months ago. In the background, the tiny team at Hello Games have been hard at work and today we’re pleased to reveal perhaps our biggest update of the year. The Voyagers update launches today and is free to existing players.
Spaceships have always been my favourite thing, the coolest thing. Give me any sci-fi film or novel or game, and I want to talk to you about the spaceships in it! I can draw you a map of the Millennium Falcon, or the Nostromo – those are important characters in those worlds. I know for our team and our players it’s that same feeling. Your ship is maybe the most important character in No Man’s Sky.
What if we could build our own ships? With real interiors, med-bays, sleeping quarters, war rooms? What if we could get out of the cockpit seat mid-flight, wander around, look out the window as the universe flies by? What if we could share our ship with friends, to build a crew and adventure together? That’s a fantasy we’ve had for the longest time. I’m sure players never thought it would happen, but it’s something we’ve been working towards for years.
This has been just a huge undertaking for our small team. Starships move at incredible speed, and to add a player calmly walking around inside a ship that is hurtling through space brings up all sorts of physics and game development problems (suddenly you have to think about relative space!).
We went even further, allowing networked crewmates to walk about inside too, networking with each other, whilst also travelling at vast speed on a networked ship. To take it even further we allow players to edit and decorate those ships around them, whilst pulsing through space or flying over a planet. It’s one of the harder game development problems!
Building your own ship, decorating it with friends, your own space that you share together – there really isn’t anything like it. Those moments where you look out the cockpit as a Space Station spins into view. Opening the airlock to rush out and discover a new planet, our returning home to your new custom ship from a hazardous environment. It feels so different and new.
Voyagers is version 6.0 of No Man’s Sky, which for us represents a big milestone. It’s honestly one of our biggest updates ever, and what I love about it is it opens up a whole new path that we will want to build on and expand in future.
Really though, we see each update as another step on a much longer journey. Sometimes we will put a lot of work into something that the community will perceive as small, but we know is important for the future. Sometimes something that was easier for us is actually really meaningful to the community – those are great too! The most satisfying part is when we’ve put in a lot of hard work for something we know is really meaningful to players, and I think Voyagers is luckily one of those updates – a lot of hard work to create something really meaningful for the future.
The best thing about No Man’s Sky continues to be the community. Something about the game attracts the best, most welcoming players. As long as players keep coming back to enjoy the content we’re making, and as long as the team is enjoying coming up with crazily ambitious stuff like Voyagers, then we are happy!
Behind the scenes, our new game, Light No Fire, is really coming along well. Honestly we always presumed that No Man’s Sky would have sailed off into the sunset long before Light No Fire ever saw the light of day. If anything, from a player and team perspective, No Man’s Sky is more vibrant now than ever, and both projects are benefitting from each other.
The Voyagers update (6.0) is available now, free to existing players. Our journey continues.
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