To preface this, I absolutely adore the game. But like most games we play there’s always personal changes you’d make to it to make it your ideal game. This is what I’d love to see in NMS.

-1. I’d love to see a more realistic representation of the size and distance of space within a star system. When you look at planets in our real-life solar system they show up as nothing more than a speck of light given their distance away. A way you could do this in game is planets show up as little highlighted specks of light in space, you use the scanner in your ship which has an attached hyper-advanced telescope, you zoom in on the planet and then you’re able to see what it actually looks like and scan it’s resources. Then you use your pulse engine and that little speck of light quickly expands to the size of a planet considering you’re moving nearly the speed of light to get there. I feel like this would be very satisfying and immersive giving a real sense of scale.

-2. Asteroid landing and construction. There’s already a billion asteroids in each system, I wish that there were always a few large asteroids floating around that you had the ability to land, walk around and base-build on. It would just add a lot more variety to what people build and come up with.

-3. Space station building and space walks. Though you can build on your Freighter. I wish you could literally create a space station in the vacuum of space just like the ISS or wherever your imagination takes you. Then added with that I think the ability to just float in the endless expanse with nothing but your suit and thrusters to keep you from floating away… Frictionless for eternity.

-4. STARS!!! Seriously like we need the ability to pulse to the star in each system. Obviously you can’t land on it, but it would be a great opportunity to find rare items or do dangerous missions. Think, the star gravity could be a constant threat once you get close enough to it where you’ll need to use your engine boost just to get out of its gravity well, once you get close enough it starts destroying your ships technology and if you get sucked in, well game over.

-5. Gas planets. This kind of ties into the stars, obviously you can’t land on it without dying… By getting imploded by gravity…. This would just add another element of variety to each system and with that the gas planets could still have moons you can land on with a gas giant lighting up the sky. Also there could be another cool way to harvest resources from the gas planet… Maybe a starship gas vacuum-harvester 😂.

-6. Planets with multiple biomes and actual rivers.. This is pretty self explanatory. But yeah correct me if I’m wrong but I have yet to ever witness a planet with actual rivers. It’s always just bodies of water.

-7.(This is more of what Hello Games could just add to a simple update) More RNG assets for star ship parts and animals just to add more unique visual variety to the many ships and animals we see. Sometimes the stuff you see feels very “same-y”.

That’s about all! Forgive me for the novel. I’d love to hear what kind of ideas you guys come up with!

Safe travels.

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.)