Article Image

No Man’s Sky’s ‘near-impossible’ Switch port is coming this fall

No Man's Sky has finally received its Nintendo Switch release date, and although it's arriving later than expected, it will still launch in 2022.

No Man’s Sky will launch for Nintendo Switch on October 7, 2022, according to an announcement on the game’s official Twitter account. Physical editions for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 will launch the same day alongside digital versions.

Hello Games, the team behind No Man’s Sky, first announced the Switch port in a February 2022 Nintendo Direct, with a summer release window, so October 7 is a bit later than expected. Sean Murray, founder and CEO of Hello Games, refers to the port as a “near-impossible” undertaking, but based on the footage shown, it looks to be running smoothly.

No Man's Sky is coming to Nintendo Switch and it looks 😍

Releasing Oct 7th 🚀 pic.twitter.com/kmKVHuVhXm

— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) June 23, 2022

The Nintendo Switch version will come with all previously released No Man’s Sky updates at no additional cost, including the recent Frontiers, Sentinel, and Outlaws content. In total, the game has received 20 updates since it launched in 2016 and is — for all intents and purposes — a fundamentally different game now. These updates have added PvP, co-op, base building, underwater exploration, and even a horror-themed freighter mission that plays similarly to Dead Space (we’re serious).

In the Nintendo Switch release date announcement above, Murray said “there’s so much more we want to do in the future,” so No Man’s Sky will likely be supported for years to come on all platforms. We do know a PlayStation VR2 edition will launch at some point in the future. The PS4 version features support for the original PSVR.

No Man’s Sky is a unique experience, allowing you to explore 18 quintillion procedurally generated planets seamlessly, while gathering resources, trading with other players, battling deadly intergalactic creatures, and surviving the harsh climates of the worlds you encounter.

Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.

Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.

Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.

Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.

Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.