There’s good news for the many millions of PlayStation 4 owners who don’t have a PlayStation plus subscription, as it’s been confirmed by Sony that PS Plus will not be required to play online.
A Sony representative said to Game Informer, “PS Plus won’t be a requirement to play online, however you will need to connected to the internet for your discoveries to register with the universal atlas.”
With much of the game still shrouded in a vague fog of mystery, it’s not particularly clear how potential multiplayer encounters will pan out. It’s an online game and you can bump into other players, it’s long been said, but the fact that there’s no PS Plus requirement the game indicates that these will be few and far between. Interestingly, it’s listed as a single player game on both its PS Store and Steam page.
Speaking of which, the PC release of No Man’s Sky has been pushed back to 12th August, a few days after the PS4 releases in North America and Europe on 9th and 10th August respectively.
Not long, now…
Source: Game Informer, PS Store, Steam
MrYd
But with 18 quintillion planets, you’re not going to bump into other players, are you? Just assume that “any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination”, as Douglas Adams once put it. (Although that was the result of a horrible misunderstanding of how infinity works, but we’ll let him off there)
So what’s left for it being online? Just somewhere to store all your discoveries? Which nobody else, ever, will visit?
Maybe it’s just to ensure that anything you name is unique? Can’t have millions of planets that only one person ever visits all being called Planety McPlanetface, can we?
Stefan L
Well, we don’t know, do we?
Everyone will have their own starting point, but you’re all journeying to the centre of the galaxy, so as you keep going, you’re heading to a common point and are more and more likely to come across other players and their discoveries. It’s a shared galaxy, regardless.
camdaz
I was wondering about starting points, in Elite Dangerous everyone started at the same station (as far as I know) which made it nearly impossible to get a landing pad in a sensible amount of time. Glad to hear everyone has their own starting point.
ron_mcphatty
Good to know those encounters with other players don’t need a Plus subscription though. Like you say we don’t know about these things but it strikes me that a good amount of the game will be a solitary experience, at least the first few or maybe dozen hours? So to hear they’re treating that part and its online features as non-Plusworthy is good, then I guess encounters are a bit of a ‘free’ treat for those who get closer to the galactic core to enjoy.
bunimomike
If there’s a million gamers on NMS, that gives them eighteen trillion planets to do, each. If they’ve converging on the centre – as you say – I’d like to think a few paths will cross.
The number of planets don’t signify their chances of meeting in the centre but it does give you an idea of the ludicrous amount of gaming “world” there is in this game. Bonkers.
TSBonyman
It needs to connect online to power teh actual clouds?
camdaz
There must be some interaction with other players as I’ve just read the following on infobarrel: “you can choose to join different interplanetary factions and help other players”.