It looks like No Man’s Sky is not yet completely done with updates, patches, and surprise announcements. The latest surprise package comes in 2 areas: the game coming to Switch 2, and a new ‘Beacon’ update focusing on settlement building.
Looking at the Switch 2 announcement first, this is what Hello Games has put out on the official website:
Explore an infinite universe at home or on the go with the cutting-edge No Man’s Sky: Nintendo Switch™ 2 Edition – available on launch day. Featuring full multiplayer, beautiful high resolution graphics, touch controls, increased planetary detail, higher framerates, high-res UI, gyro aiming, cross-play and cross-save support to continue your existing journey.
The fact that this comes with cross-play and cross-save support in itself shows that the devs have been hard at it for a period of time and that is something that they specifically have mentioned in a deep dive video put up today. They, in fact, have been working on this platform for the past year, where the devs had ‘a secret room with Switch 2 devkits’, and have been able to ‘massively push the level of detail, and rendering more than before at a much higher resolution and frame rate’.
Coming next to the ‘Beacon’ update, this gives the player the opportunity to become an ‘Overseer’, managing townships with citizen, infrastructure, issues, demands, and resources. Players can manage upto 4 such settlements that can become a base of operations for their journey. This update also looks to have been properly planned, and the devs have mentioned specific events also that will take place, like festivals, expeditions and so on. All the classic city-building and management flourishes look to be there even to the extent of individual personalities and skills for the citizens.
This update will be available for all existing platforms for free from June 4th.
