Five years ago today we launched No Man’s Sky. For the first time we watched players all over the world begin to explore the universe we had created. It was a nerve-wracking moment and the culmination of five years of very hard work for our tiny team (the average team size was just 6, and at launch was just 15).

We knew this was the start of a journey, but never expected what a wild ride it would be. Today we’d like to take a moment to appreciate this milestone together. It hasn’t always been easy, but the thing that has been our guiding star throughout has been the players and the community. Behind every update, every video, every feature and line in a patch note is a team that cares so deeply for this game.

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Our journey continues with the announcement of Frontiers, our next major free update. This is just another step on our voyage and is coming soon.

Watching that video even the team is surprised by just how much No Man’s Sky has changed over the years, but also how close it has stuck to that central vision of building a universe to explore.

As I look back, I think of the big moments throughout development.

Our journey really started from the moment we stepped out nervously on the Sony stage at E3 2014 to share the first gameplay of our ambitious project. It was months after we had our office flooded, and it felt like a small triumph to still be standing as a team.

The years before and after launch are one big blur, but some updates really stand out as milestones. 

It’s hard to imagine how we launched so many major updates so close to launch. Foundations launched around 10 weeks after the main game, introducing Base Building for the first time. Base building is now such an integral part of No Man’s Sky, but it felt unexpected at the time. Foundations really became the foundation for how the next few years would take shape.

No Man’s Sky Next was an inflection point. It felt almost like a new game launch and brought multiplayer to PlayStation players in 2018. The reaction of the community continues to motivate us years later.

In 2019, as just one part of the large Beyond update, we brought the whole game to PlayStation VR. Built from the ground up, travellers could experience the wonders of the universe in fully realised virtual reality as a free update. It was the moment I felt I could see the game with f

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Do you like voices? We’ve got you covered! Episode 406 of the Official PlayStation podcast features a trio of interviews; Greg Kasavin from Supergiant Games talks Hades ahead of its launch on PlayStation next week, Respawn devs Steven Ferreira and Travis Nordin discuss Season 10 of Apex Legends, and SIE Product Director Toshi Aoki talks about the DualSense Wireless Controller.

Stuff We Talked About

• Ghost of Tsushima: Legends
• Oxenfree II: Lost Signals
• Hades (interview begins at 11:30)
• Apex Legends (interview begins at 40:48)
• DualSense Wireless Controller (interview begins at 55:52)
• Going Under

The Cast

Sid Shuman – Senior Director of Content Communications, SIE

Tim Turi –  Manager, Content Communications, SIE

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Last week, we asked you to face up against you favorite bosses in the game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s formidable foes: 

mett981 faces off against Emperor Nefarious in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

Amianan_NiRaGuB shares the arresting stare of Medusa in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

KeyserS007 goes lightsaber to lightsaber in this epic boss fight from Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order.

Ixion_VII faces the Grand Inquisitor in A Plague Tale: Innocence.

Photoingame fights off a massive BT in Death Stranding.

CaliOcelot shows a hulking Colossus from Shadow of the Colossus.

Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week? 

THEME: Rain

SUBMIT BY: Wednesday 9 AM PT on August 11

Next week, we’re enjoying summer showers and stepping out into the rain. Share rainy moments from the game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.

Season Five is incoming fast and with it comes a hefty serving of new free content, like five new Multiplayer maps, the Flamethrower Scorestreak, new Warzone and Zombies Perks, and a brand-new mode: Double Agent. We can’t wait for you to play this one. Prepare for sabotage and deception at its finest.

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The next step of Perseus’ plan is finally in play as the Numbers Program gets broadcast to field agents around the world, on both sides of the conflict. The mind-altering message affects all but the most resilient Operators, turning former allies into sudden enemies.

Season Five of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Call of Duty: Warzone arrives on PlayStation on August 12. Here’s what you need to know:

New weapons and Kitsune lead the Season Five Battle Pass

The Season Five Battle Pass brings two new weapons: the EM2 and TEC-9.

EM2 (Tier 15) – The full-auto EM2 assault rifle comes equipped with a built-in low-optic zoom for improved accuracy. It features a slower fire rate with reliable range.

TEC-9 (Tier 31) – Extend out of close-range with the TEC-9’s improved accuracy, low recoil, and slower fire rate. A versatile SMG with solid damage output.

Purchase the Season Five Battle Pass to gain access to all 100 tiers of content, including Kitsune, the Japanese self-taught cybersecurity expert and world-class thief, instantly at Tier 0. And for the first time, an additional exclusive Kitsune Operator Skin can also be instantly unlocked with a Battle Pass Bundle purchase at the start of the season.

Earn two more weapons — the Marshal shotgun/pistol hybrid and Cane melee weapon — by completing their-game challenges or by purchasing their corresponding Store bundles later in the season.

Get more on PlayStation — exclusive content for Black Ops Cold War<

What’s up PlayStation Nation?! We are very happy to be back on the blog to announce that Skater XL Multiplayer Free Skate mode is now available for PlayStation players! With this update, friends from all corners of the world can link up online and share a skate session, regardless of location, weather, or physical ability.  

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Skateboarding is more fun with friends, and there’s nothing quite like hanging out, talking shop, and vibing off each other. That essential experience inspired us to create Skater XL’s online Multiplayer Free Skate mode.

Multiplayer Free Skate mode is built to replicate the energy and hype of a real life skate session as closely as possible.  No rules or barriers, you and the homies decide where to skate, what to skate, and how to skate it.  Whether you want to match each other trick for trick, choreograph party lines, or just vibe off each other in a more freeform way, Multiplayer Free Skate provides the platform.

The social component of skateboarding has always been part of our vision for Skater XL, so we’ve given Multiplayer Free Skate players the capability to capture and save video of impressive lines and momentous trick moments using the in-game replay editor. Videos are a big part of the culture and we felt it was important to give players a way to share and rewatch their favorite moments long after the session is complete.  A check of the Instagram #SkaterXL will give you an idea of the amazing content that is already coming out of the creative community. 

Building on our foundational goal of giving skate gamers more control than any prior title with our innovative Independent Foot Control system, the opening of the social ecosystem will allow for an even more immersive experience through increased interactions, collaboration, and more lively environments.  

 Multiplayer Free Skate is our first step in opening up social modes in the game and features: 

• Skate with up to 10 people online – Join a random room or start your own private one and invite your friends to join using a passcode
• Replays – Replay and save your group party lines, with the same replay editor functionality available in single player mode

Following the PlayStation community’s incredible response to Godfall on the PlayStation 5, the team at Counterplay Games is ecstatic to open up the world of Aperion to PlayStation 4 players. We are excited for the expanded community to experience all the new content coming to the game, including the next chapter of our story – Fire & Darkness*, starting August 10. 

With additional allies joining our adventure, the Godfall community has a lot to be energized about – including a free upgrade path to PS5 for all PS4 players, as well as the free Lightbringer Update. With the Lightbringer Update, PS5 and PS4 players will now experience cross-generational co-op and can utilize our new matchmaking beta to tackle our most challenging endgame content. On top of that, we’re introducing a new game mode, unique cosmetics, and even more loot! With all the refinements we have made, I thought it might be helpful to take a moment to look at how far Godfall has come and let you know what’s in store. 

Last year, we launched Godfall alongside the PS5 and have continued to hone the experience based on your immensely helpful feedback. With additions like our hefty Primal Update and quality of life updates, revamped input buffering, new resource tools through Zenun, boss fight improvements, Tower of Trials upgrades, Dreamstones, and more. The game has evolved past our wildest expectations and that is all thanks to you. 

Together, we have faced and defeated the mad (wannabe) god, Macros, and are about to embark on an even more harrowing journey into the Fire Realm in Fire & Darkness. You will face new foes as an all-consuming darkness threatens to spread throughout Aperion and choke the world of all light. Expect nothing less than fierce resistance as you enter the Fire Realm. The Flameblood Tribe are some of the most formidable enemies in all of Aperion. They will stop at nothing to prevent you from reaching their leaders as they work to fulfill Kosmera’s plans of old. 

Need an even greater challenge? The Lightbringer Update, which is free for all players, introduces the all-new endgame Lightbringer mode for those that have achieved level 50. The Sanctum’s light has been trapped, and the most powerful knights will be needed to release and spread it, building up enough strength to face the all-consuming darkness.  

The mode begins with you and up to two other friends loading into one of the realms of Aperion where a mysterious force has emerged and shrouded the land in darkness. You will need to seal Dark Tears in a race against time to allow the Light of Seventh Sanctum to shine through. Teamwork will be essential to surviving these threats – matchmaking beta will serve you well. 

Hello! I’m Szymon Erdmański, producer at Bloober Team, and I’m happy to tell you more about The Medium, coming to PlayStation 5 on September 3.

For those who haven’t heard about the game, The Medium is a third-person psychological horror game that features innovative dual-reality gameplay – basically, you can play in two worlds at the same time. This unique twist on single-player split-screen gameplay is only possible on next-gen hardware such as PS5. 

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You play as Marianne, a medium who lives in two worlds: our world and a hostile spirit world. At the beginning of the game, Marianne is haunted by a strange vision: a little girl murdered at a lake. She comes to believe that she can learn the truth behind the vision at an abandoned hotel resort. Once there, she discovers that years ago the place was a stage of a horrifying tragedy and hides a grim mystery only a medium like her can solve.

Using Marianne’s unique psychic abilities, you must uncover deeply disturbing secrets, solve intriguing dual-reality puzzles, survive encounters with sinister spirits, all while exploring two realities at the same time. A haunting soundtrack co-composed by Bloober Team’s Arkadiusz Reikowski and Silent Hill composer Akira Yamoaka will accompany you on your journey.

DualSense controller and dual-reality horror 

On PS5, we are taking full advantage of the console’s DualSense wireless controller to immerse you even deeper into the mystery of the Niwa Hotel.

Our goal is to let you feel Marianne’s reactions to what is happening as she explores and interacts with the game world, thanks to haptic feedback. For example, when she is using her Spirit Shield ability, you can literally feel in your hands as dozens of spirit-world moths hit the barrier. 

Another example is Marianne’s Out of Body ability, which lets you leave your physical body and explore as the spirit only. It’s a bit like diving, you can’t survive too long in that state, eventually you’ll suffocate if you don’t return. So the longer you remain out of the body, the quicker you’ll feel the controller pulsate – giving you a hint when it’s time to go back.

The adaptive triggers will not only raise the level of immersion but also make the controls more intuitive. When you start charging up the Spirit Blast, the medium’s offensive ability, the trigger will resist at

Hades launches next week on PlayStation! We hope you have a wonderful time exploring the Underworld of Greek myth and discovering all its many surprises starting August 13. Today marks almost four years since we first started thinking about this game, so I wanted to tell you about some of the unique circumstances that led to our small team developing what’s become our biggest hit ever — a game that’s already earned more than 50 Game of the Year awards from publications including IGN, Eurogamer, and many others. Suffice it to say we could never have imagined all this when we were just starting out!

We first started talking about the Hades project in the late summer of 2017, just weeks after the launch of our third game, Pyre. Our studio had recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, and we were in a reflective mood, thinking back on the different games we’d made. From Bastion, to Transistor, to Pyre, we jumped from one original setting and playstyle to another. However, a central goal in each project was to create a richly atmospheric, fully realized world for you to immerse yourself in. Practically speaking, that meant discarding our best ideas from our last project and starting from scratch. After all, we didn’t want our latest games to feel overly similar to their predecessors, and wanted each world to stand on its own. But, heading into Hades, the thought of yet again setting aside all our best ideas from the past felt needlessly limiting. Couldn’t we build on our best ideas and experience, rather than starting over yet again?

So, one of the foundational ideas behind Hades was to make it sort of a ‘greatest hits’ of everything we’d been able to accomplish and enjoyed doing in our previous games to that point. Here then were some of the central ideas behind Hades:

A ‘narrative rogue-like’. We were drawn to creating a game in the rogue-like format, meaning a game centered on replayability, where each time you die and start over, you get a different experience due to procedurally-generated encounters and other interesting bits of randomness. Despite this being a popular genre with many outstanding titles, we felt we could contribute something to it by placing a bigger emphasis on narrative and storytelling than the genre is typically known for. This approach would not only play to our strengths as a team, it would hopefully help open up the thrills of rogue-like games to more players.

Our first-ever adaptation (rather than a wholly original setting). We’ve had the privilege of being able to create our own unique worlds for each of our games. After three titles, we had a good sense of what that experience was like. But something we’d never done before was adapt an existing world or setting in our own style. We chose the world of Greek myth, both because I and others on the team have a lifelong fascination with it, and because we felt it was such a good fit for the rogue-like genre. We also felt like we had a specific point of view on Greek myth that we hadn’t seen expressed much in modern adaptations, through our focus on the Olympians as a big, dysfunctional family, and centering our perspective on the Underworld and its own little-known gods.

We’re super excited to announce that Carrion, our grisly reverse-horror experience is chomping its way onto PlayStation 4! If you’ve always dreamed of portraying an amorphous blob of gristle, teeth, and tentacles as a PlayStation owner, you’ve come to the right place.

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Carrion has been greedily gobbling up players during its first year on Earth, and we’ve had our sights set on bringing our tentacle-baby’s wanton path of destruction to PlayStation for what feels like forever! We hope those of you who have yet to feel the warm, sticky embrace of our alien protagonist find that it’s been worth the wait.

We are thrilled for you to soon get your feelers on Carrion, but what is a “reverse-horror experience”? Surely that’s just made-up marketing nonsense? Well, if you’re still unaware of our creepy (award-winning) creation, Carrion immerses you in the role of an abominable alien creature as it awakens in a secret, underground laboratory. With no explanation how it arrived there or for what purpose, there is only one thing on the mysterious monster’s mind: escape! And eat people. Okay, two things. But that reverse-horror title makes a lot more sense now, right?

Hey everyone! I’m excited to announce that A Short Hike is coming to PS4 this fall! A Short Hike is a little exploration game about climbing up a mountain.

In it, you guide a bird named Claire up to the peak, freely exploring the mountainside and helping other folk along the way.

I started working on the game after going on a few road trips along the west coast, hitting up as many hiking spots and natural landmarks as we could. I really fell in love with hiking, and I started to wonder if I could capture that experience as a video game.

There were some specific moments I wanted to capture, such as the moment of respite upon reaching the summit, and surveying the landscape from a new perspective. But generally, I wanted to try and recreate the peaceful meditative feeling you get as you explore the world around you.

To help create a sense of freedom, I tried to design the game as a tiny open world. I wanted to encourage exploring the road less travelled, and have your curiosity be rewarded. This meant I had to design around the player going the exact opposite of the obvious route, and have the game’s pacing still feel good!

This led to the creation of a variety of mini-games to discover on the off-paths and break up the hiking. After adding in fishing, boating, and (a form of) volleyball, the game was starting to feel a little more like a little summer getaway – a love letter to those breezy summer days without anything to do and all the time in the world.

For the most part, I’ve been working on A Short Hike by myself. Between the programming, design, art, and testing… I’ve had my hands full! One thing I found difficult was the writing. Although the game is light on story, I did want it to be meaningful to me, and I wanted to touch on some of the fears or worries I have.

In a previous project, I had hit a creative block with the writing, and I really struggled with putting something together I was happy with. So for A Short Hike, I tried to take a more improvisational approach. Once I started writing dialogue the same way I chat with my friends over text, it came much more naturally, and helped me find a voice for the game.

Since I was doing most of the art myself, I took the opportunity to experiment with the style. I was interested in trying to create a 3D game where the pixels are a core part of the aesthetic, the way retro 2D games often are. While 2D games have been refining pixel art for decades, 3D games have been working to hide pixels as much as possible. I wanted to see if I could make a beautiful (and readable) 3D world using as few pixels as possible.