Hi all!

I remember seeing the trailers and all the chatter around this game back when it was still being announced and I recall thinking to myself that I needed this game in my life. Well, the launch didn’t go so well, to put it mildly and I just forgot about it until recently.

Decided to get it and give it a shot, since so many online articles were claiming that it redeemed itself and is now the game it claimed to be at launch, so why not.

I have to say that it’s been a while since any game grasped me this hard. There is a sense of wonder and mystery that I can’t put into words, and the feeling of being free to do whatever I want is amazing. I have not gotten very far into the game, only just entered the Anomaly for the first time and spend a few good minutes drooling at all the cool ships. There was even a blue kinda organic-looking one, no idea what that could have been. Oh and one that had a red light in front, moving from side to side just like KITT, that looked amazing and I need it!

So far I have done the tutorial base, but since moved off to another planet, found a nice little Paradise Planet with cool Fauna and nice landscape, so I settled there with a new base. Along the way, and exploring different planets I found some weird bones that sold for quite a bit ( at least for my standard ), found a strange ball that maybe I shouldn’t have picked up since it angered some sentinels and I just barely escaped, and found a very strange planet where my ship was reporting “anomaly strength” at whatever %. Not sure what that was about, but felt cool.

I know that I still have a long way to go ( probably ), but so far I’m having so much fun just exploring and getting side-tracked all the time because I saw something interesting, which leads me to something else and then another thing and I just end up losing track of what I was doing in the first place. But that’s fine because I get to do so much stuff.

For my next steps, I’d love to get a new, cooler, ship, explore more planets to see what they have to offer, adopt a companion and find out what they can do – I have one at the moment, but not entirely sure of their utility – and find out more about trading. I’m starting to notice that prices of some things vary from station to station and I’m sure some clever people out there worked out some trade routes or something similar. Finally, discover more about the storyline, it seems interesting so far!

I went in this game blind, don’t know much about the story or what the endgame looks like, and I’m loving it this way.

Thanks for reading an excited player’s blabbing this far!

Pretty much the title. Guess I will have to wait until next year to actually see this game go somewhere.

We got spaceships but no true variation, or even modding/crafting. Not even species/faction related ships.

We got freighters but they are a flying inventory box combined with an annoying-to-access timer management minigame.

We have factions and races, but there is zero interaction between the two.

We have crafting, but literally zero use for hightech components.

We got derelict freigthers, but once you see two you have pretty much seen them all.

We got expeditions, yet I completed the last one in a relaxed weekend session so that’s essentially nothing for now.

We got combat, but effectively 4 mobile enemy types and maybe the same number of hazardous fauna which is the same on every planet. Why even have shooting when there’s nothing to shoot at?

We got bases, but nothing to do in them aside from stacking biodomes and placing a large refiner. Settlements are even worse in that regard: you expand it so you… can expand it more? Purely cosmetic changes that aside from eating some resources change nothing in how I interact with the game.

And after 5 years there still is no worthwhile lategame activity. There is no hunting for ship parts/gear. There is nothing rewarding you for the grind for the species/factions. There are no possible mammoth projects one could try to tackle, like expanding your settlement to the point where you can (extreme example) have them start building your own custom freigther. There is not even rare “fashion” to chase down to flex on others in the anomaly with your surpreme sense of aesthetics (or shameless lack thereof, Warframe’s fashion game sure was one crazy mess sometimes).

Every part of this game is just another weird isolated extra-piece that barely fits with each other, and somewhere someone has tried to cram in random story beats with a crowbar or something. The potential is definetly there, this car could definetly go super-turbo-speed with a right do-over of the engine and the gears. But instead watch them install a bluetooth-capable cupholder. It’s so infuriating to see all this potential and HG doing effectively jack shit with it.

No Man’s Sky has been a one time purchase since it was launched 5 years ago. How can Hello Games continue to update the game without charging a single dollar? Is it sustainable? I have been wondering about this a lot. I did some digging and these are some of the things I was able to find.

Launch: According to Superdata article, No Man’s Sky made 78 Million USD from digital sales during the first month of the launch. (No man’s sky also had a physical retail launch). (My guess is during launch year, it generated around 100-130 Million USD revenue (not profit))

Now hard facts, looking at the Hello Games’ (No man’s sky developer) financials, just before January 2018 (1 and half year after launch) they had roughly 82 million USD cash left. out of which half 41 million was taken out of the company for something (to buy office space? long term investment? cash payout to founders? I don’t know). So January 2018 in hello games company had 41 million USD cash. In late Summer 2018, came the first Big “Next” update, which generated roughly 35 million USD by October 2018. In summer 2019, came the “Beyond” update which generated 25 million USD.

As of October 31 2019 (3 years after launch. and last publicly available financial), they have around 100 million USD cash left. They have a burn rate of 6.2 million USD a year (salary + admin). This means without additional money, they can keep updating no man’s sky for 16-17 years. (Not to say that they should update no man’s sky that long. They have already gone above and beyond of what’s expected)

2020 and future: No man’s sky surely made significant money in 2020 with “Origin” update. (How much would be know around October this year when the next filing will be made public) They also released “The Last Campfire” game but revenue from that small game would hardly be a million or two. No man’s sky has been part of Xbox game pass since 2020. So Microsoft should also be paying some money as well. This being said there are surely diminishing revenues. But profitable nonetheless. Meaning their current net worth should be well beyond 100 Million cash (107 million net worth) at 2019. (My guess for current net worth would be 125 Million USD)

No man’s sky has been a unique case. It’s an indie game that has generated AAA level of revenue. (My guess is close to 180-200 million USD revenue in its life time with roughly 10 million copies sold (5.4 million PlayStation, 4.4 million steam, 2.4 million Xbox) (source: playtracker) I would argue that a AAA game studio (with much higher burn rate) would also have been able to break even with sales and revenue of No Man’s Sky for 5 years post launch support. But Of course, breaking even is never enough for publicly traded parent companies of AAA devs. For any indie team like Hello Games, this is very rare and more than enough to sustain for decades.

At any time, Sean (who owns 50% which equates to 60 million USD) and other founding members can pack up and buy an Island and retire but they decided to stay and make No Man’s Sky better and so far it has paid them well financially. Sean has said in interviews that Hello Games are also developing something new as ambitious (if not more) as No Man’s Sky. My great many wishes for amazing, hard working, inspiring folks at Hello Games.

Source:

Hello Games filing history

(Note filing numbers are in pounds. I have converted them in USD and also rounded them for simplicity.)

Why are people such @holes!!! Why build base next to an interceptor so no one else can get it!? And a light right next to it so it can’t be claimed.

Any ideas how to get round this or do I just give up!?!?!