A few months ago, Hello Games surprised Xbox One owners by announcing No Man's Sky for Microsoft's platform. Better yet, the studio said that the title would feature Xbox One X enhancements. Fans have been asking for this game for years now, and it finally launched on the system today! No Man's Sky was previously a PlayStation 4 console exclusive for many years. No Man's Sky is currently listed as 7.82 GB on Xbox One, so it might be worth it to go digital given its size. Nowadays, a lot of patches are larger than that entire game. However, more space might be required one the files are installed on your console due to the "unpacking" process. No Man's Sky is a science fiction adventure set across an infinite universe, in which every star is the light of a distant sun, each orbited by planets filled with life, and you can go to any of them you choose. In this procedurally-generated universe, you'll discover places and creatures that no other player has seen before. However, a mystery lies at the center of the galaxy, an irresistible pulse that draws you on a voyage to discover the true nature of the universe. 505 Games is only publishing the physical version for Xbox One and Hello Games is going through the ID@Xbox program to launch the digital edition. Keep an eye on WindowsCentral.com/Gaming for all the latest in Xbox and Windows 10 gaming, accessories, news, and reviews!<doc-sep>No Man’s Sky is now available on Xbox One for the first time, complete with its gigantic NEXT update that drastically changes the experience. Hello Game took a ton of heat for the way No Man’s Sky launched on PS4, but the studio plans to gain back some good will with this release. You can purchase No Man’s Sky on the Microsoft Store for $49.99. It is indeed Xbox One X enhanced to support 4K resolution and HDR. You can view the full patch notes for its NEXT update (via Reddit) below. Multiplayer Team up with a small group of friends and explore the universe together, or be joined by random travellers. Help friends to stay alive, or prey on others to survive. Fight as a pirate or a wingman in epic space battles with friends and enemies. Group up to build communal bases, farms, and racetracks, and share your creations with all players online. Explore the galaxy at your own pace, or progress together from the very start of the game and all the way through the story. Progress together through the tutorial and story, or explore freely. Invite your friends aboard your Freighter and take on challenging multiplayer missions from the Galactic Commission Station on your bridge. Communicate with other players vocally using a headset, and / or converse using text chat on PC. While wandering the galaxy solo, continue to experience chance encounters with strange floating orbs. Community Engagement In-Game Community Content Soon after the release of No Man’s Sky NEXT, Hello Games has planned its first season of weekly content and community events. This will be free for all players, with no microtransactions. Take part in these community missions to unlock new rewards and customisations. Players will also be able to interact with Xbox One Mixer streamers by helping or hindering their gameplay. Galactic Atlas Website NEXT marks the launch of a new website dedicated to the community, which we’re calling the Galactic Atlas. The site features points of interest in the No Man’s Sky Euclid Galaxy, and will grow in functionality and expand over time, in part through your feedback. Key Regional Hubs are marked, with discovery statistics and community events appearing soon. Base Building Bases can now be built anywhere on any planet, high in mountains or underwater. Hundreds of new base parts have been added to unlock more creative possibilities. Teleporters can now be built anywhere on the planet surface, and the teleporter menu has been reworked for ease of use. Base complexity and size limits have been dramatically increased. Players can own multiple bases, spread across regions, planets or star systems. Sculpt the terrain around your base with the improved terrain manipulator. Third Person The game is fully playable in third or first person, both on-foot and in ship. Ship controls in both views now allow for true low flight mode across the surface of planets. Communicate with other players using expressive gestures available from the quick menu. Character Customisation Construct an Appearance Customiser in your base or freighter to personalise your appearance. Play as a Gek, Vy’keen, Korvax or Traveller / Anomaly. Freighter Enhancements Assemble and upgrade a fleet of frigates, each specialised to excel in combat, exploration, trade, industry, or support. Command your frigates from the bridge of your freighter to complete real-time fleet missions. Call on your fleet for assistance in space battles, or deploy them to help you explore a specific system. Improved freighter base building allows for a truly custom capital ship. Crafting and Resources All core substances and resources have been reworked and rebalanced to increase consistency and realism. Planetary resources have been expanded, with unique substances and items to find and refine based on the planet’s biome and weather, as well as stellar classification. Deployable tech can be picked up and carried in your inventory. Crafting is deeper with the addition of buildable refiners. Convert raw substances into more valuable materials for constructing advanced products and base parts. Experiment with refiner recipes to discover all the possibilities! Procedural Tech Discover unique procedurally generated technology to upgrade your Exosuit, Multi-Tool and Starships. Analysis Visor Enhancements Quickly locate terrain resources and buried products with the improved analysis visor. Set short-term goals by tagging the markers of points of interest. Pinpoint your exact location on a planet with visible latitude and longitude coordinates. Missions and Structure The opening section of the game has been overhauled, introducing new story elements and an early taste of advanced gameplay features, as well as a new mission chain for players with bases. Envoys in Space Stations offer rewards and tributes to high-ranking members of their Guilds Mission types have been expanded, with photography, feeding, freighter attack and defence, archaeology, and specialised hunting missions now available. Graphical Enhancements Dramatically improved visuals bring more life than ever to planetary landscapes. Experience a greater sense of planetary scale with massively improved draw distance. Deep improvements to planetary terrain generation create more varied alien environments, featuring higher mountains and more navigable cave systems. Planet surfaces now look more interesting and representative from orbit. The universe is more diverse than ever with colour palette variety, dense forests and large trees, and abandoned and empty systems. New dynamic tessellation enables detailed terrain height maps without sacrificing performance. Tessellation will be rolling out in parity to all platforms that can support it very soon. Hazardous storms look more dramatic with new biome-specific particle effects. Significantly more detail added to ship, NPC, and building textures. Planetary rings of asteroids and improved space visuals make space more beautiful than ever. Explore vast oceans of visually improved bodies of water with new continental terrain shapes. Dynamic volumetric clouds create more realistic planetary atmospheres. Increased quality clouds will be rolling out in parity to all platforms very soon. UI Overhaul The HUD has been remixed to both improve readability and reduce intrusion on the gameplay area. The visual location of messages is better prioritised to help emphasise critical information. Quality of life improvements make the build menu and the quick menu more efficient. Inventory stacks can now be split for a more streamlined experience. Players with freighters can summon any of their personal starship fleet at any time. Maintenance and repair interactions have had a visual and functional overhaul. Repairs now take place ‘in-world’, and can be carried out in incremental stages. Players interested in salvage can repair damaged ships + Multi-Tools by gathering the right components and fixing damaged slots. Space Station Marketplace Purchase all your space exploration needs in the huge new Space Station Marketplace. Exploration, Fauna and Flora Find and excavate buried ruins with the Terrain Manipulator to unearth locked ancient treasures. Use the Terrain Manipulator to locate buried technology modules and turn the salvaged components into new base parts with the Blueprint Analyser. Some creature types will herd together, grazing and fleeing from danger as a group. Creatures now respond more enthusiastically to being fed, recognising you as a friend and alerting nearby creatures to the food source. Creature movements now appear more natural and intelligent, with improved AI and entirely revamped animations. Sentinel behaviours and animations have been improved. Players can stand their ground in combat, or take advantage of the time between reinforcement waves to escape and find a place to avoid Drone scans and searches. Find Navigation Data and use it in the overhauled Signal Booster to locate planetary structures. Survive the threat of new hazardous flora and fauna. Be careful if you touch the eggs… Audio Creature voices are now more diverse, and NPC vocals have been updated to match their new set of animations. New foley for the player character is audible throughout the game. Ship sounds and combat audio have been improved. The game soundtrack is expanded with several new music tracks composed by Paul Weir. Patch Notes Third Person • Third person camera for walking, jetpacking, swimming and in-ship flight • New player models • Completely reworked animation system • New animations for players, as well as NPCs and creatures • System and animations for gestures • Character customisation • Player character turns to look at points of interest • New get in / out of vehicle effect • Interactions show the player character where appropriate • Warping in ship is in third person • Resized various deployable tech to better fit third person mode Missions • Real time missions • Scheduled missions • Multiplayer missions • Completely overhauled tutorial • New mission types – photography, feeding, freighter combat, archaeology, and specialised hunting missions • Guild envoy missions Bases • Bases can be built anywhere • Players can own multiple bases • Hundreds of new base parts • Increased base complexity / size limits • Joint base building • Improved teleporting and selection between teleport destinations • Improved terrain editor modes and options to be more intuitive • Toned down saturation intensity of palette choices for colouring base building parts • Base terrain editing now stops when you hit the limit rather than overwriting old edits • Bases can now be deleted • Improved system for placing base building parts • Increased base building radius and made it expandable • Disabled base auto uploading, and added manual controls • Enabled downloading more than one external base from other players Freighters • Frigate fleets feature – including missions, upgrade system, system combat and exploration assistance • Overhauled base building inside player freighters • Reworked and added procedural textures to freighter bridge hologram planet • Redesigned path from freighter hangar to bridge • Improved speed of airlock doors opening on freighters Crafting and Resources • Reworked and rebalanced all core substances and resources • Deployable tech can now be picked up • Added refiner based crafting system • Added Craftable ammunition • Improved damage falloff on mining beam UI / UX • Additional markers visible in analysis visor • Points of interest can be tagged from analysis visor • Latitude / longitude displayed on analysis visor • Improved HUD layout • HUD lines dynamically hidden with the corresponding UI elements • Improved notification layout • Improved build menu • Improved quick menu • Inventory stack splitting • New repair interface • All player owned ships can now be summoned • Added system for repairing damaged inventory slots • Backpack showing in your inventory will now match customised character backpack • Backpack bars display hazard protection and life support • In-ship map now highlights enemies • Improved docking indicators when flying • Completely reworked shop UI • Nanites no longer take up inventory slots • Scanning ships shows their slot count • Save slots are now sorted by timestamp • Galaxy map can show multiple markers for each system • Added dynamic suit protection inventory icon • Inventory full notifications now take into account cargo slots • Fixed camera voxel to star voxel in Galactic map • Can pin base building recipes on the HUD • Added danger icons to tentacle plants • Improved tech and product pinning, with more detailed guides to obtaining the build requirements • Improved compass • Improved HUD marker icons for objects of interest • Added multiplayer text chat on PC Graphics and Planet Generation • Improved fog and increased draw distance • New terrain generation system for improved navigability and more varied earth-like and alien landscapes • Reduced situations where cave props can be spawned above ground • Improved particle systems fading out over distance • Added support for extremely large biome props • Improved and increased variety of clouds and cloud shadows seen from space • Improved planet surface rendering from space • Improved terrain lods and visuals when flying in from space • Improved colour selection during planet generation • Improved sky and fog colour selection • Tightened triplanar texture blend areas • New colour mapping system to create more varied and atmospheric visuals • Improved tree density • Tree size variation • Added empty systems, with no current inhabitants • Added abandoned systems, with derelict space stations • Improved storm visuals • Improved textures for ship, NPCs, and buildings • Added planetary ring system • Increased asteroids density in space • Improved space visuals • Added support for larger bodies of water • Character shadows for first person gameplay<doc-sep>
Today, Hello Games and 505 Games launched No Man's Sky on Xbox One for $49.99. Many months ago, the developer confirmed that the title would support Xbox One X , but didn't provide any details as to what that would entail. Would the game achieve native 4K resolution? Would there be a performance mode? Many of these questions were left unanswered. The only clue we had was the Xbox Store listing which stated that No Man's Sky ran at "4K Ultra HD" on Microsoft's new machine. Alongside the patch notes for the "Next" multiplayer update, the studio revealed the resolution and performance options for No Man's Sky on Xbox One X. According to the post, the game features a "High Performance" mode which runs at 1440p 60 FPS, and a "High Quality" option which achieves native 4K resolution (2160p) on the console. In comparison, the maximum resolution the PlayStation 4 Pro version outputs is 1800p. If you disable the "Supersampling" mode on PlayStation 4 Pro, you're given a 1080p 60 FPS presentation. As expected, the frame rate isn't locked and fluctuates depending on the environment. It's great to see that Hello Games decided to give Xbox One X owners the choice to either focus on visuals or performance. We've been playing on High Performance mode and it runs smoothly. There are some slowdowns here and there, but overall it's a great experience. As expected, the High Quality mode greatly improves the visual quality and No Man's Sky looks crisp on a 4K display. It's by far the best picture you can get on a console because there's no upscaling from 1800p involved. For those unfamiliar with the game, No Man's Sky is a science fiction adventure set across an infinite universe, in which every star is the light of a distant sun, each orbited by planets filled with life, and you can go to any of them you choose. In this procedurally-generated universe, you'll discover places and creatures that no other player has seen before. However, a mystery lies at the center of the galaxy, an irresistible pulse that draws you on a voyage to discover the true nature of the universe. Keep an eye on WindowsCentral.com/Gaming for all the latest in Xbox and Windows 10 gaming, accessories, news, and reviews!