PlayStation's Shawn Layden: 'No Man's Sky' hasn't yet achieved its 'incredible vision'

By Gabe Gurwin Published November 5, 2016

Live with YouTube Gaming Episode 6: Blizzcon, PS4 Pro, iJustine, Boogie2988

No Man’s Sky has seen its share of controversy since its August release, with its vast, nearly limitless world receiving praise while criticism was directed at just how little there actually is to do on each planet. Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios chair Shawn Layden has weighed in with his own opinions on the matter, and he suggests that the game could very well achieve developer Hello Games’ massive vision in due time.

Speaking to Geoff Keighley during an episode of “Live With YouTube Gaming” (thanks to “NYstate” on Reddit), Layden said that “a very small team had a very huge ambition” when the project began, and that updates and continued development will allow the game to inch closer to the fully fleshed-out, living universe suggested by early No Man’s Sky gameplay demonstrations.

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“They’re still working at it. They’re still updating it. They’re trying to get close enough … or closer to what their vision was,” Layden told Keighley. “I think what we learned from that is we don’t want to stifle ambition.”

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Layden later added that the game industry is the only industry where “everyone has the courage to say ‘yes,'” and that developers “just don’t get all the way there” at first.

Layden isn’t the first PlayStation executive to speak on this matter. Back in September, Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida said that director Sean Murray had promised more features than could be realistically delivered, and that “he didn’t have a PR person” assisting him when speaking to the press.

The promise of additional features might be too little and too late for early No Man’s Sky players. Though concrete numbers for the PlayStation 4 version aren’t available, the Steam release saw a drop in players of over 90 percent just a month after launch. In the U.K., the game had the second-biggest launch of any game on PlayStation 4 to date.

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Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…

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