No Man's Sky will not make its 21 June launch date

Hello Games’ much anticipated No Man’s Sky is going to be delayed and will not be able to keep its June 21 release date, claims Kotaku. A “reliable source” has said that GameStop employees, where promotional material for the game was deployed, were asked to place a “Coming Soon” over the “June 21” on the materials.

The game is unique in many respects and part of its appeal lies in that uniqueness.

No Man’s Sky is a game that puts each player in a unique universe. Literally. When a player starts a new game, the entire universe of No Man’s Sky will be generated from scratch using a mathematical formula. Anything that a player can see, a star, planet, asteroid, the player will be able to visit. It’s a really ambitious concept and takes procedural generation to the next level.

When you see a planet and you want to land on it, everything about it will emerge into existence at the moment of that decision. The planet, it’s topography, resources, oceans, life, architecture, everything will be generated on the spot. Every rock, every blade of grass, everything will emerge into existence and achieve permanence. Life on that planet and the planets that you visit will go on with or without.

It’s not very clear what the actual gameplay is about though. We know that you’ll have a spacecraft to yourself and that you’ll have the ability to fly to any point in your universe. You’ll also be able to land on planets, get out of your craft, harvest resources and much more. Why you’d want to do that is still a mystery. The game might be a survival game, a roguelike if you will, or it may have some overarching plot that puts everything in perspective.

The delay in the game’s release is disappointing, yes, but it would be fair to say that we’d rather have a delayed but polished and bug-free experience rather than an unfinished one.