It seems the rumors of No Man’s Sky‘s death have been greatly exaggerated. While the makers of this space exploration game for PlayStation 4 and PC managed to build up a mountain of hype during the lead-up to launch, the actual game fell short of fans’ expectations. If you thought that’s where the story ended, you’d be wrong. Developer Hello Games announced today it will bring No Man’s Sky to Xbox One in August. And as for PC and PS4 players? They, along with Xbox One owners, can expect to get the game’s biggest expansion yet later this year.
The Xbox One version will be enhanced for Xbox One X with full 4K and HDR support. If you have an Xbox One S, you’ll get HDR support. This version will also come with the three expansions already available on the other platforms. These include Foundation, Pathfinder, and Atlas Rises.
As for the exact release date (or dates), we’re not sure yet. Nor do we have many details about the major expansion. But we do know the expansion will be free, and that they’re calling it No Man’s Sky NEXT.
“We called this update NEXT,” Hello Games’ Sean Murray said in a press release, “because it’s an important next step on a longer journey for us and the community. We’ve been working our socks off on this and it’s by far our biggest update so far. It will be free to existing players, and we’ll continue to support No Man’s Sky in this way for the foreseeable future.”
If it really is the biggest update so far, it must be pretty huge. Previous expansions have added base-building, “joint exploration,” and a cool 30 hours of additional campaign story.
“We’ve learned a lot over the last few years, faster than we would have liked!” Murray says. “I’d love to avoid talking completely and just make things people can play, but we knew this was going to leak anyway, and I think it’s news that should make a lot of folks happy.”
If you’re just getting started on the game, be sure to check out our No Man’s Sky beginners’ guide to save yourself some tedium.