Few games have divided players as much as this summer's No Man's Sky. The game simply didn't meet the lofty expectations placed upon it when it released last month, and many have criticized game director Sean Murray and Hello Games for promising numerous game features that didn't make their way into the final product.
At long last, a Sony executive is speaking up about the widespread backlash against what was one of the most anticipated games of the year. Shuhei Yoshida, the president of Sony Worldwide Studios, tells Eurogamer he understands where some of the criticism against the game is coming from. Sony served as both publisher and distributor for the physical PS4 version of the game, which arrived three days ahead of the digital PC version.
"I understand some of the criticisms especially [director] Sean Murray is getting, because he sounded like he was promising more features in the game from day one," Yoshida says. "It wasn't a great PR strategy, because he didn't have a PR person helping him, and in the end he is an indie developer."
Some of those features include multiplayer. Murray long said that the game did technically have multiplayer and that players could encounter one another, but that the chances of doing so were tiny given the huge size of the game's near infinite universe. Sure enough, two players found themselves in the exact same spot shortly after the game's release, but were unable to see or interact with one another.
Yoshida goes on to say he enjoyed the game personally and looks forward to the updates it will receive in the future.
"I am super happy with the game actually, and I'm amazed with the sales the game has gotten, so I'm not the right person to judge if it has 'harmed' the PlayStation brand," he says. "I personally don't think so. If anything, I am proud that people can play No Man's Sky on PS4 as well as PC."
Murray has already promised that the next content update to the game will add the ability to build bases and fly massive space freighters, but so far there is no word on when those updates will arrive. Since release Murray and Hello Games have been focused exclusively on fixing technical issues with the game across numerous updates.
