It's safe to say that one of 2016's biggest hyped games, "No Man's Sky," was a complete letdown. The vast procedurally-generated random galaxy was novel at first but eventually became too repetitive and shallow for players looking for a real experience.
"No Man's Sky" developer Hello Games has seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth after providing a couple of post-launch patches to the game. That doesn't mean, however, that it may not be sitting on its hands.
PC Gamer reports that Sony chairman Shawn Layden believes that Hello Games is still working on "No Man's Sky," and that the game could still reach its "full potential" sooner than later. Layden claims that Hello Games is still making updates for "No Man's Sky" as we speak, even though there hasn't been any word from them since.
Forbes' Paul Tassi believes that this is certainly possible, with all their energies focused on making "No Man's Sky" better. He notes that Hello Games spent the time between the game's completion and shipping to create a huge day one update that changed many things about the title.
It's possible that the game was even worse before that update. Tassi speculates that the only way people would return to playing "No Man's Sky" is if Hello Games actually delivers on their initial advertising promise of true exploration.
The problem with the game was that although "No Man's Sky" technically had an infinite amount of things to discover in its universe, everything was literally the same. If the team can find a way to make the procedurally-generated galaxy also generate random varying quests and everything else, then it would be the game people were expecting.
The last update Hello Games made to "No Man's Sky" came in late September, the second of two patches that fixed bugs. The Hello Games Twitter account and e-mails were hacked late last month, reports VG24/7, which prompted Sean Murray to come out of hiding. There's no reason to believe that they're not working on improving the game, however.