No Man’s Sky Dev Reveals the Game Supports a Whopping 21 Platform Combinatorics, Including 3 PS5 Pro Modes

Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky has received many updates since its release in August 2016. The game was initially released for PlayStation 4 and Windows, but over the past few years, the game has been released on several other gaming platforms. VR support was also added in the Beyond update in August 2019.

In a recent tweet, Martin Griffiths, No Man’s Sky‘s engine programmer, shared a long list of platform combinatorics that currently support the game. Hello Games introduced cross-platform play for all supported platforms in 2020, so this list shows that the studio has optimized its game for all these platform combinatorics.

No Man’s Sky Supports 21 Platform Combinatorics

No Man’s Sky‘s engine programmer, Martin Griffiths, is a well-known name in the gaming industry for his contribution to ProjectCars and EA’s Harry Potter games. In a recent tweet, Griffiths revealed that No Man’s Sky supports 21 platform combinatorics, listing all of them. Optimizing the game for all these combinatorics isn’t an easy job but the highly-skilled devs at Hello Games were able to do it.

Here’s a fun updated list of the platform combinatorics that we currently support in No Man’s Sky! It’s a long list, which I hope conveys the complexity involved in releasing a large cross platform game like ours:

PS5 (Base)
PS5 (Base, PSVR2)
PS5 Pro
PS5 Pro (8K)
PS5 Pro (PSVR2)…

— Martin Griffiths (@Griff_) November 10, 2024

Thanks to the efforts of the systems and engine team at Hello Games, All these platform combinatorics were created and maintained in a single unified code base. The list also reveals that there are roughly 140 combinations of graphics options within PC and Mac. It is very impressive that Hello Games is able to maintain and support this while many major video game studios are still struggling.

The list has also revealed that No Man’s Sky also supports 3 PS5 Pro combinatorics: PS5 Pro, PS5 Pro (8K), and PS5 Pro (PSVR2). The support for PS5 Pro was added this month as the console was finally released last week after months of speculations.

No Man’s Sky Got Cross-Platform Play Feature In Mid-2020

In 2019, virtual reality support was added as a part of the Beyond update. Subsequently, cross-platform play across all these platforms was added in mid-2020. Before this update, the game used different servers for each platform versions. The VR support and cross-play further boosted No Man Sky‘s popularity among a wider audience.

The game had a rocky start as the game received mixed reviews initially as players found the gameplay uninspiring and repetitive. On top of this, many claimed that Hello Games cut a lot of features from the final version of the game. It was clear that the studio wasn’t able to handle the larger-than-expected player count but with post-release updates, the studio has managed to improve the game.

It’s been eight years since the release of No Man’s Sky and it seems like Hello Games is finally ready to move on. At The Game Awards 2023 in December, Sean Murray, Hello Games’ co-founder, introduced Light No Fire, another exploration and survival game like No Man’s Sky.