Ten years after its troubled launch, No Man's Sky is coming to Apple devices. It will run on iPhone 11 or newer and on iPad. The game has become one of the best known comeback stories in the industry, thanks to years of free updates. Now its whole universe fits in a pocket.
What it means: The story of No Man's Sky is now a textbook case in the industry: a game that launched with far less than its makers had promised, took heavy criticism and, instead of being abandoned, kept improving for a decade through free updates until it won players back. Its arrival on iPhone and iPad also shows how far mobile chips have come, since a title built for consoles and PCs can now run on a pocket device, and support from the iPhone 11 onwards covers a large audience. For software makers more broadly, the lesson is about the relationship with users: steady, visible improvement after launch can change how a product is seen, even when the first impression was poor, as long as there is transparency and a reliable update rhythm. For Apple, titles like this strengthen its effort to present its devices as serious gaming platforms, which in turn influences how publishers decide to invest in the ecosystem.
Read the original on Ars Technica
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