No Man's Sky teases new expansion, Frontiers, in 5-year anniversary video

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Hello Games' space exploration sandbox turns 5 today, and there's still more to come.

How time flies! It's hard to believe it's been half a decade since No Man's Sky launched, but Hello Games released its space exploration sandbox on August 9, 2016. 

That's five years ago to the day, and to celebrate the milestone Hello Games has released an anniversary video you can watch above.

Those five years have been eventful. They began with the rocky No Man's Sky launch which included some major performance issues on PC and missing multiplayer features, plus a general feeling that the game didn't live up to the pre-release hype—which would have been impossible, since that hype was astronomical.

But Hello Games didn't sit idle. The small studio has added a startling amount of new features since the game's original launch. The anniversary video takes us through the evolution of No Man's Sky at a breakneck pace—the addition of base-building, ground vehicles, an expanded story, the long-awaited multiplayer features, VR compatibility, living ships, mechs, rideable creatures, a player hub, expeditions, plus improved visuals and procedural generation. No Man's Sky really has come a long way.

And despite all that's been added over the past five years, Hello Games isn't done yet. The video ends with a tease of what's to come: Yet another free update for No Man's Sky called Frontiers is on the way.

And... that's about all we know about it at the moment, just the name. The logo is revealed in Alien opening credits fashion, with the letters slowly appearing on screen as ominous music plays, but I don't know if that's a hint that the expansion will be alien-related or if it's just a bit of sci-fi flair. According to Hello Games, we'll learn more about Frontiers soon.

Christopher Livingston
Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.