No Man's Sky lands on iPhone and iPad October 28, free to try
Fellow space nerds, take note: No Man’s Sky is heading to iPhone and iPad on October 28, with pre-orders open now on the App Store as part of Apple’s Indie Games Week.
According to Hello Games, this isn’t a cut-down spin-off. The iOS version includes the game’s many years of major updates, Voyagers and the recent Cosmos update among them. It runs on hardware as old as the iPhone 11 and 3rd-gen iPad Air, and the download is about 5GB.
What to expect at launch:
- Free to try, with a one-time $19.99 in-app purchase to unlock the full game (per MacStories)
- New touch controls, plus controller support, and mouse and keyboard on iPad
- No multiplayer at launch, and planetary settlements need an iPhone 15 Pro or newer
- MacStories reports no cross-save or cross-play at launch either
Sean Murray compares it to the game’s original Switch launch, where support grew over time based on player feedback. Hello Games also says it put a lot of work into battery life and heat, which is the real test for a game this big on a phone.
PPR take: a ten-year-old game that started rough and just kept getting better, now in your pocket. It’s hard not to respect that.