Rumour: No Man's Sky Development Is Troubled on PS4

I'm sure they'll figure it out eventually. Sony won't let this fail now with all the attention and media support it's had.

But it has taken sooooo long to get to this point :/

I am worried about this game, as I feel the amount of time it's been in the making would probably hurt it's publicity, and people would just be apathetic to it. I admitted that I'd be surprised if it makes the new date.

Now, I don't think the game is doomed, but it has it's work cut out for it.

With only 13 people working on it, hopefully it wont be pushed back even longer.

Umm... I mean, I would assume that's why they announced the new date..? I would imagine it's pushed back to June so it'll have had plenty of optimization time. I'm not that worried about the game.

Sony might end up sending the xdev team in to help get it up and running , does mean it'll almost certainly rule out other platforms part from Sony and PC if this does happen but can't see Sony wanting this to go on for long if true due to its media exposure...

From day one I was skeptical that this game will live up to ALL it's claims. But you never know. Hope I'm wrong.

It's been so long since it was announced that I'd be surprised if there wasn't any major issues.
They're running the risk of fatigue setting I'm with regard to enthusiasm here. I'm certainly not as excited as I was.

I still think what's most disturbing is while we're not very close to the release date, it's not super far off either and we still don't really know what the game is.

@get2sammyb Announced too early. Shown running on hardware it may not have actually been running on. Waiting forever for it to be released.

Remind you of anything?

It will now look like minecraft and release along side the last guardian and FFVII.

OK, serious question. Wasn't the entire basis of the PS4 architecture to be closer to PC so it was easier to port games after the issues companies had w/ Cell? The CPU, the 8GB of DDR5 RAM. The game looks good, but it looks more like WW HD on Wii U than Uncharted 4 or Ratchet and Clank.

Somebody care to elaborate on what they think the actual problem is? Hardware seems adequate for what's on screen.

@rjejr I'm wondering where they manage to save more or less infinite world's.

Not at all surprised...cant really put NMS and dreams in a direct comparison but at least MM have been honest in wording their pressers..."running on ps4 with no external assets"..hope so much that everything works out(nms is my most wanted game) but this news might go some way to explaining seans nervousness when hes been showing the game off😉
I wouldn't be surprised if the Original report turns out to be exaggerated now I think about it...

Announced too early, it will be hard to hype it up next year without spoiling any surprises which they wish to keep....I hope its good, as the concept is a great one....

Hey guys, you mind delaying the title a bit so we can attempt to hand fist VR into it?

It's made by a small studio whose offices got flooded recently, they would have to be magicians to get it running perfectly on an interior platform right now, the bar game pretty much looks done right now so i imagine the next 7 months will be spent optimising it for the console.

It's fine, considering the delays natural and environmentally theyve dealt with I expect them to fix it sooner rather than later. With that said, delaying it 6months (roughly from their possibly original goal) is smart, so they have enough time to figure out what is wrong and polish the project off, without a second delay.

Naughty Dog had major issues with their first PS3 game just months from release and it all came together in those final months, most games do!! These articles are a real disservice to some of the harder working dev teams out there based solely on rumors. You're better than this PushSquare!!

No Man's Sky was only 6 months into development when it was shown at the end of 2013. 3 years isn't exactly an unusual length for development. In fact it's right smack bang in the middle.

What are you talking about? It stealth released a few days ago.

Queen of gaming, LauraKBuzz <3
Everyone should watch her Life is Strange let's play, its so emotional (and quite personal)

@Dreamcaster-X To be fair we did clearly mark it as a 'rumour' and even said that it could well be nothing to worry about since many games go through periods like this. Still worth an article, I think, if only to give some insight into why it might be taking longer than expected.

Might be struggling getting VR to run on it. I'm mystified how they are going to get anything substantial running in VR on the PS4.

I wouldn't worry assassins creed unity was in worse shape when it shipped.

Hey Robert and everyone,

If you play the PGW trailer they showed it says "Sony Computer Entertainment Presents" not "Hello Games Presents"????????

Did Sony buy Hello Games???? Why is their name in the start of the No Mans Sky video and not Hello games???? Interesting!!!!

Sony would only put that on their if somehow they are the owners of the IP which would mean they bought Hello Games???? Please correct me if I'm wrong but it does have some merit to it.

Cheers!!!

Rob aka Graf

Why do people think it is taking longer than expected? Did anyone REALLY believe it would release this year? I certainly did not. It is a small team that had their entire work space flooded, causing a serious set back. What are we at 3 years development now? Sounds about right to me. Sean Murray has been fairly open and honest about the development of this game, while still keeping alot of it secret as to not blow it's load before it even releases. I have a feeling this rumour has more to do with optimizing it for psvr, not just the ps4. Wasn't it just running on a ps4 with Colbert?

Well, its kinda obvious, this game should need a pretty hefty CPU for the world creation, expansive universe, AI, etc...

the PS4/XB1 CPU are... not very good when it comes to gaming (to say the least), they will need to adapt and adjust tons of things to keep the game running smoothly on consoles.

At this point they should suck it up, release it on PC to create a a flow of cash and give them time to develop the PS4 version

@get2sammyb ummm DriveClubGate? lol Let's just hope this isn't the case with this game.

@Faruko Yea but isn't this game always online, allowing the server side computers to do most of the heavy lifting and algorithm processing? Least that's what I thought I had read. This has more to do with a small team tackling a big project than anything else IMO, either way they gave a release month, and it seemed pretty concrete.

Well they've got long enough to fix any issues...

Seriously though, I was really disappointed with the release date. I don't want it coming out broken, so take all the time needed, but with the whole hype train and 2013 original announcement its a bloody long time to wait. Wish more devs would go the way of Bethesda and not go on and on about something until its got 6-12 months before release.

I'm sure I'll still pick NMS up but I'll admit my excitement for the game kind of died when they said 2016.

Chooo chooo.

Lately I've been hearing more stories from developers about how the power of the PS4 isn't what we all hoped it would be. I'm not much of a technical guy, but you hear and read things that strike me as odd, because on paper the PS4 seems like a really balanced piece of hardware. It's unified GPU/CPU memory is the way to go for games that aren't too taxing and easy to develop for, but games that ask lots of processing power, which I reckon NMS does, run out of bandwidth really fast. This explains the underperforming of some games visually: where you'd expect way better graphics on the PS4 than the One because of the far superior GPU, getting it to 1080p is sometimes so taxing it leaves little or no room for post processing effects, which make the visuals seem less crisp. Again, I'm not really into this matter but I understand that the GPU has the power to deliver, but because it shares its memory with the underpowered CPU devs run out of bandwidth and have to sacrifice post processing effects, NPCs, framerate or it causes the pop in that you see in lots of open world games.

As devs get even further acquainted with the hardware I am positive they'll sort it out, mainly by making more use of GPU computing like Mark Cerny initially had in mind, but it's still a shame the CPU is a bit underpowered so it can't make the most of its otherwise decent internal memory and GPU. But I honestly believe these are things they'd only run in after a year or so, because if you look at Naughty Dog, they were absolutely positive that they would hit the 60fps mark for Uncharted 4 and now they've dialed it back to 30fps. But affer they announced the multiplayer's resolution isn't 1080p, a decision I wholeheartedly support btw, I knew the rumours I heard about the PS4s hardware weren't false; they have team ICE backing them up and they can pretty much make the most out of the PS4 from all developers, still they have to make huge concessions.

I'm curious to see how this will affect the PS4 later in its life. I'm positive that through better resource management and using the CPU to its fullest they can squeeze way more juice out of the PS4, but how will VR fare on hardware that doesn't seem powerful enough? A revision of the hardware with a more powerful APU I believe it's called would help them out a lot to make the VR experience viable, or they just have to make the processing unit that comes with the set really powerful. I know revisions in hardware specs wise don't occur too often, but easily makes PSVR 30% - 50% more expensive because of the extra processing unit, which isn't ideal to work with because it makes PC VR games not simply a matter of copy/paste to the PS4 devkit for devs.

If there is anyone out there who reads this and feels he or she can clear some things up I glossed over, interpreted wrong or add to what I've said, that'd be great. Like I said, I'm not really into the matter but is based on bits and pieces I gathered from reading DF's articles and people I know in the industry trying to explain something really complicated to someone who isn't much of a techie.

For people who are concerned that this is meant to bash the PS4 in favor of the One, it isn't. The One is clearly underpowered especially when you consider what they've set out to accomplish; don't forget they actually gave some of the reserved memory back to the devs to work with after taking out the Kinect and STILL it doesn't run on a resolution that equals PS4s in lots of cases. But in some cases this does mean there was some room left for post processing effects like AF, which isn't even really taxing on the hardware, but seems to be missing in a lot of PS4 titles and unfortunately makes the visuals more blurry and less crisp.

They'll figure it out eventually.

That said, I'm not seeing a June 2016 release. Like, AT ALL. That's just over half a year from now. Usually games are a few months away from going gold by that point.

April will roll around, and we'll get an official delay but with "late 2016" target. And then, it's 50/50 whether they actually even make that.

@Boerewors
Everything you say is about right. The PS4 has a weak link in that its CPU is underpowered. It's just not fast enough to process floods of tiny instructions in rapid succession and the fact that the RAM is GDDR5 does not help, because that adds a bit of latency as well when passing data to the CPU. CPU cache memory is too small to hold game code instructions permanently, so they are loaded into the GDDR5 RAM when the game boots up which has slow latency getting those instructions to the CPU when needed.

PS4 works best with games that are graphics heavy with lots of high res textures, complex lighting and lots of assets that get reused, because that makes good use of its powerful GPU. Games that require a lot of small vector calculations such as No Man's Sky, where everything is flat shaded vector artwork procedurally generated in rapid succession, puts excessive strain on the weak CPU.

Latency and speed are totally different, but equally important. It's best described using the internet as an example. Data speed is the speed the data travels. Latency is the short delay before the data starts traveling. As an extreme example, it does not matter if a 10GB download takes 1 second to start (latency), if it downloads in 10 minutes (speed). But in multiplayer gaming, a one second delay in sending the data of you shooting someone is just not going to work. Small instructions in rapid succession require low latency because they all add up very quickly.

The powerful GPU inside the PS4 and large capacity fast GDDR5 RAM are underused by No Man's Sky because there are no high res textures and no assets that get loaded and reused. Everything is procedurally generated fresh in real time where ever you go. The PS4 hardware is not well suited to that type of game.

AC Unity hit a CPU bottleneck as well by overloading the CPU with massive floods of AI, and all the AI streaming animations and physics. This then affects the CPU's ability to manage a steady frame rate because the powerful GPU was then left waiting for instructions to process. Another side effect of overloading the CPU is that it then generates controller latency, so that there is a delay in responding to the players controller instructions because the CPU is too busy or CPU bound (no spare resources). AC Unity suffers bad controller latency as a result, but it did use high quality textures and reused assets, so it did make use of a broad range of the PS4 hardware.

The PS4 runs into problems when a game is not designed well to make use of all the hardware equally. If the game produces excessive CPU activity, leaves the GPU idle and does not make use of the fast GDDR5 RAM, then the performance will suffer. The XB1 is the opposite because MS raised the CPU clock speed slightly and use low latency DDR3 RAM, so it performs a little better on the vector stuff, but performs poorly on the high res texture stuff because of its weak GPU and zero GDDR5 RAM. That is why the XB1 can only manage 900p on most games. A version of No Man's Sky on the XB1 may be able to push out 1080p, but it would be very tight.

No Man's Sky is possibly the worse game you could put on PS4 because it is not a good match. That is not No Man's Sky's fault. It is because Sony had to make the PS4 to a budget and chose to save money on the CPU side which was entirely valid at the time. Normally that is not a problem, but occasionally a game comes along that just spams the CPU.

I'm hoping Sony release the PS4 Elite they are considering. They can then fix the limitations in the PS4 standard edition. Three PS4 weakness's need to be addressed in the PS4 Elite.

1 - The CPU needs to be beefed up and run at a higher clock speed to cater for vector and physics intensive games.

2 - 4GB of low latency DDR3 RAM needs to be added to feed the CPU so the high latency fast speed GDDR5 RAM can just be used to feed the powerful GPU.

3 - A 4TB hard drive (2 x 2TB) should be added to store games because gamers are now avoiding buying games they want because they don't have the room for them without deleting their favourite games. A ticking time bomb for Sony that they need to address quickly.

The PS4 Elite and PS4 standard can exist side by side playing the same game disc because the architecture is scaleable. Games can be made to automatically sense the hardware and deliver the required optimisation that each PS4 version can handle.

Existing PS4 gamers will still be able to play the future games at the quality they have at present, so their investment is protected, but anyone that can afford to upgrade to a PS4 Elite will be rewarded by better performance.

In the short term Sony need to manufacture an optional hard drive expansion unit that clips onto the left side of the PS4 adding 4TB of RAM (2 x 2TB) that includes an empty slot for the existing internal hard drive to make it a simple hot swap installation with no data copying. That will keep the PS4 standard version running until the end of its lifespan without players needing to delete games.

There is an argument that a hard drive extension unit should be heavily subsidised by Sony because they gain financially with all the game sales it prevents them from loosing. Sony need to run the numbers and see if they loose more by not providing a subsidy with gamers not buying games, or provide a hardware subsidy and sell more games.

@justerthought
First off: thanks for giving such a clear explanation of the matter, I understood literally everything you said. I usually talk to real tech heads or actual developers about these things, but because for them this is all pretty much self- evident I am left with bits and pieces of info I have to piece together myself.

Furthermore it's really cool to see that I'm not the only one that believes a 'PS4 Elite' as you call it is a great idea. No matter where I bring this up, people get overly defensive and tell me I need a PC, but I don't want to play the majority off my games on a PC, I want a console that kicks ass. And by upgrading the hardware after 2 to 3 years, you open so many possibilities, even for games that have already come out. They've chosen this PC architecture for a reason and because games are scaleable it will be possible to play the likes of Bloodborne or The Witcher without the technical issues that plague them; 60fps, some extra AA, throw in some AF and there you go, you've got yourself a brand new game!

The technology isn't standing still as we always say over here and yesterday's chipsets are old tomorrow. Sony could easily offer reasonable prices with off the shelf parts and still make one hell of a console, and the regular ps4, which would still play almost all of the games since no publishers is leaving that install base behind, would be a lot cheaper right away. I think Sony should look into ways of financing these consoles, just like they do with contract phones; make the consoles available with a more expensive PS+ subscription where you eventually pay your $400 spread over 3 years, so you can jump on the next one when the contract ends.

Unfortunately these things are never gonna happen and I'm afraid this gen will drag on as long as the PS360 one did, which would be horrible imo. We were promised 1080p gaming back when the PS3 came out but 10 years later 1080p/ 60fps still isn't the standard. Part of the problem are gamers and I don't think they'll ever change their mindset. People get so defensive over their piece of plastic these days that I think they're granting it more value than it actually has. People are so caught up with getting the most out of their PS4, and making sure others don't of they happen to choose another piece of plastic, that they don't see that the PC is running circles around them. It's hard for Sony to bring a revision next year if this would upset these people so much that they simply stop caring for the product; because if the console gamers have made one thing clear the last years, you can't enjoy your games if someone else has more powerful hardware or games you don't have.

Reading comments about upgrading RAM etc boggles my mind, whilst technically possible with the architecture that the PS4 has, consoles are not PCs. I can't see Sony going that way at all, no chance.

What would make more sense is to lower the life span on the console so more like 5-6 years instead of 8-10. Segmentation of the market with an Elite version which runs the same games in a higher res etc would be a huge mistake imo. Where does it stop? The PS4 Elite+ now capable of running Uncharted 4 at 60fps 4k resolution?

Devs will always want more power to develop games further but I'm not sure if upgradable consoles is the answer... Not yet anyway, lets see how the steam machines go as thats essentially what we are talking about.

@Boerewors
I agree. PS4 Elite is the way to go. Those that consider such a move as a stab in the bag are just sucking sour grapes because they will still get the same performance in future games whether the PS4 Elite exists or no not.

Sony made a wise move dumping the CELL and going for the scaleable x86 architecture because that allows them to introduce enhanced consoles mid gen that run in parallel with existing hardware in a way that is transparent to the user. That could not happen with PS3 otherwise you would have two types of game disc adding expense and confusion.

It's better to have a closed two tier console system playing a one tier game, than two tier consoles playing two tier games. Managing a close two tier console system is easy to achieve. PC is an open system with unlimited tiers of hardware permutation so devs struggle to please everyone with a fully optimised game dedicated to their configuration.

Pop a game disc into the PS4 standard and the game will detect the hardware and output 1080p 30fps PC mid/high graphics with standard AA and struggle with vector intensive games.

But pop the same game disc into a PS4 Elite and the game will output 1080p 60fps PC ultra graphics, high quality AA, less pop in, larger draw distances and render vector intensive games perfectly. Plus you would not be required to delete games from your hard drive if they gave us 4TB.

A PS4 Elite would basically negate all the positives PC gamers enjoy. You would basically get a cutting edge PS4 Elite for less than the cost of upgrading your PC gaming rig. My guess is that PC gamers with economic sense would jump ship to a PS4 Elite if Sony went down that road.

For me a PS4 Elite a no brainer, but Sony have to be careful not to upset the loyal user base who are extremely reactionary and don't like the thought of anyone having better on the same system, hence testing the waters first. I'm pretty sure it will happen and gamers will be educated to expect it as the norm from now on. But right now, Sony have to break a few traditions that are treated like moral code of practice.

Well, it was always a problem when some sites realized the CPU used in the XB1 and PS4 are:

1° Not gaming CPUs
2° They are custom made CPU that were used in mobile products, Jaguar SoC its a low power CPU used in cheap laptops and even some tablets, this is an 8-core version of the cpu (low power as in low use of system power and watts to avoid overheating and add more battery life to the products)

Not to mention, AMD CPUs have been laging behind in technology for some time, they have Zen down the line, but its still not there.

The GPU has no problem whatsoever and while still somewhat underpowered its more than capable of 1080p gaming with good graphics

@Bad-MuthaAdebisi Think of it like you have 50 high definition photos. Each of them would take up a lot of space on your HDD. Each photo is numbered from 1-50. I say a number and you show me the appropriate photo. I could give you long instructions of which order to show me the photos in that would just be written like "1, 5, 40, 32" and so on. Those instructions could be saved in a notepad file that only takes up a few KB.

In a similar way, a game would use a finite number of large resources, like our photos, but just refers to them and reuses them with simple, small instructions. Every rock in Uncharted might just be using the same texture, the same photo, just warped, rotated, enlarged or shrunk. It's not taking up more space for each rock, it's just that each rock is like a paint-by-numbers that asks for "photo number 32" with a little instruction of how the warp it or change it to make it look different. Even the different rocks may actually be the same one rock just flipped upside down or rotated in another way.

So when you have 1000 planets, you don't have 1000 times the information of one planet. You have the core library of information, your textures, sound files and so on, and each planet is nothing more than that notepad file that has a list of numbers asking for different photos, figuratively speaking.

@Cron_13
How can you say a PS4 Elite can never happen. The concept has arose because Sony are considering it and asking what consumers think. The new consoles are like PC's. They are not an open system but they are scaleable like a PC. It's expensive to jump a gen because they have to make a completely new console design with its own set of games and target vision. It's much better to have a PS4.5 or PS4 Elite mid gen to simulate the effect of PC's upgrading in order to keep pace.

You seem to be in favour of steam machines when in fact they are basically scaleable consoles in exactly the same way. You would not tolerate one steam console owner being annoyed when another steam machine comes out offering better performance, so why treat Sony any different.

@justerthought read much?

@Matroska
I agree with everything you said, instances of an object take up far less memory than the original object, but we are not talking about large objects or textures when discussing No Man's Sky. The whole thing is math based on procedurally generated vector assets. That all has to be done on the CPU in rapid succession because no one is using GPU compute yet on the PS4.

@Cron_13
lol yes your right. Time for me to shut up

I looks like that developers are getting lazy to put effort in console games to optimise to the max. (not talking about Hello Games btw) The earlier consoles looked really good later on with less RAM. The PS4 has 16 times more RAM and its the better version off it. I should think the processor maybe small but it has to be better then the old one from IBM on the PS3.

@Cron_13 I think you are spot on about the lifespan it will get way shorter.

@SonyInfinity Nope. The servers only handle information sharing about planets, creatures, etc. The game can also be played offline.

It's also worth pointing out that there's no corroboration of this story. It's a rumour Laura Dale heard from "someone". We don't even know if it's someone from the industry, never mind someone who would have access to the development progress of the game.

@GenialityOfEvil With only a 13 member team seems like it would be alot easier to keep secrets, and problems, in house and not leaked out. As to my other question, are we also to assume that the build he brought to the Colbert show wasn't running on a ps4? I know he was using a ps4 controller and I guess it is possible that it was running on a computer, but they certainly didn't say that.

Well, its not an uncommon practice to use PCs in shows.

@justerthought I know, you're right. I was specifically responding to what the other poster about how they manage to "save more or less infinite worlds".

@SonyInfinity It's pretty unlikely that it was running on a retail PS4, since they can only run closed builds. Debug PS4s are much bigger and just look like computers, so it's possible that someone in the audience saw it and thought it was a PC.

@justerthought
"The concept has arose because Sony are considering it and asking what consumers think."
Do you have a link to back this up?

@JaxonH "I'm not seeing a June 2016 release. Like, AT ALL.

You're stealing my shtick. You're shtick is - Dates don't matter, as long as it's good when it releases. Unless Zelda U broke you.

How you doing, you weren't enjoying the Nintendo censorship postings all that much. I miss having games actually come out that we could discuss. Even DKCTF that kicked my butt, at least is was a good game, I'm just not very good at it (I know the difference.). Now it's all delays all the time. Delays and censorship. Crazy.

Too much talking. Too many events. Too much hype. Not enough delivery.

It's like the entire videogame industry is run by Bryce Harper.

@rjejr
Lol.... Ikr.

It doesn't bother me about the delay so much (I got like 8-10 new PS4 games just in the last month it seems, not counting Halo 5, Yoshi's Wooly World, Fatal Frame, Chibi Robo, Legend of Legacy, Persona 4 Dancinf All Night, etc). Just an observation really.

The censorship is getting under my skin though. While I understand the whole age debate for Xenoblade X, it's not the only instance it's happened. I just wish they'd leave my games alone and keep their over zealous fingers off. Hands OFF. Pry those content scrubbing fingers off my games... now step back.

With all that said, I'm just enjoying all my games as usual. You may need to get a Vita for Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel (and it's sequel which releases next year). Speaking of, did you ever buy a PS4? Sinalefa did, he had me buy one and ship it to him. Now it's your turn.

You're missing out on Tales of Zesteria, and Divinity Original Sin, and MGSV, and Dragon Quest Heroes, and Uncharted Collection, and 2 dozen other games. Even Darksiders 2 which is a bare bones port, even it is a joy to play without the screen tearing that plagued Wii U version.

@JaxonH I own Darksiders 2 on PS3, about halfway done 2 years ago. I'm waiting on U4 before I get a PS4, hoping for a good price on a bundle w/ the game, maybe the trilogy as a bonus at retail. Getting XCX this holiday for $85 so no PS4 then. Haven't started Yoshi yet, playing Disney Infinity 3.0 w/ my geek wife, she's Leia, I'm Luke, in the original trilogy playset. And I've been watching 4 hours of baseball every night for the past 2 months, less time for videogames. Which does help the lack of games, but you know me and my date obsession. Even when I don't want the game it drives me nuts. Not 1 or 2, but it seems like half. And the other half aren't finished when they ship on time.

I do wish I had a PS4 for DQ Heroes right now. I really enjoyed Hyrule Warriors and this looks even better. On the bright side it also looks like a $20 game next Christmas. And i still need 2 player Godzilla - PS3 was solo only so I skipped it. May skip MGS this time around, I'm old and would rather play DQ Create, Build, whatever it's called. And of course FFXV, an FF game that actually looks good, it's been 14 years, X was the last good one, though 12 had it's good points, just not FF good. So sometime in 2016 after I finish XCX, don't care about Starfox. Maybe for my birthday in July.