No Man's Sky For Nintendo Switch Arrives This Summer
The latest Nintendo Direct for February 2022 has dropped its fair share of new announcements, including the news that Hello Games' open-universe, procedurally generated, sci-fi survival and crafting game "No Man's Sky" will be coming to the Nintendo Switch.
A brief trailer shows off what looks to be in-game footage running on Switch hardware, though given what happened with the title's initial launch in August 2016, a bit of suspicion is understandable. If the announcement did indeed showcase the Switch version of "No Man's Sky," things are looking pretty decent. The trailer features a lone traveler exiting a cave into an expansive alien world, one with local lifeforms wandering around and ships passing by overhead, before getting in their ship and heading off-world.
According to the game's official listing, "No Man's Sky" for Switch is expected to release at some point in summer 2022, though the price hasn't been revealed yet. We can reasonably expect the upcoming version will be priced about the same as the current release (around $40 USD), but considering the cost and complexity of porting games to completely different consoles, it's not a given.
Some questions remain unanswered
The trailer also reveals the Switch version of "No Man's Sky" will pack all of the previous updates and expansions that were made available for console and PC players, including "Foundation" and "Prisms," covering the last five years' worth of additions. So long as you put in the work to gather the materials and plans, you'll be able to build your own mechs and underwater bases on Switch just like Travelers on other platforms. It also looks like the upcoming port will support both docked and handheld play modes, though not tabletop for some reason.
One possible caveat is the multiplayer aspect, however. The trailer doesn't explicitly show other players interacting with the Traveler (we can see what appear to be NPC ships at a few points), and the game's listing currently shows "To be determined" under the number of players. Of course, this could mean any number of things. Maybe the feature just hasn't been fully refined yet, or it's possible the primary focus is on getting the game itself up and running, then incorporating multiplayer later. Perhaps online play just won't work with a game this complicated (what with all the procedural generation) on the Switch. We won't know more until it's officially released later this year.