Traversing the stars is a beautiful experience, but it can get lonely out there on your own. No Man’s Sky is home to many features that are best shared with others, including base-building, expeditions, and Discoveries—which is why players may be wondering about crossplay compatibility.
Does NMS have crossplay?
NMS has crossplay, but there’s a catch: The full functionality of the cross-platform feature is only available for players on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation—not for Nintendo Switch users. Although the Switch allows some crossplay functionality, it’s limited to NMS’ Discoveries feature.
Developer Hello Games added crossplay to NMS in 2020 when the open-world game first arrived on Xbox Game Pass. This functionality allowed players to join lobbies with their friends on other platforms, whether you’re on Xbox, PlayStation, or PC, making it so players could run around on planets and fly their ships side-by-side.
NMS arrived on Nintendo Switch two years later in 2022, but players noticed they weren’t able to group up with players from other lobbies. On NMS’ Nintendo storefront page, it says players can upload and share discoveries with other users—a unique feature that allows players to permanently name planets, solar systems, fauna, and flora—but it says nothing about grouping up in a lobby with your friends. Users on Reddit have recently reported that if you’re playing on Switch, you won’t be able to see any other player like you would on other platforms.
How to use cross-platform features in NMS
Enabling the cross-platform option from the Network Options will allow you to see players from every platform, including your own.
To make it easier to identify which device your friends or other people are on, No Man’s Sky has separate icons for different platforms.
If you take notice of the controller icon that displays next to a person’s username, you will know whether the player is playing from their PlayStation or Xbox. If they are playing from a PC platform like Steam and Xbox Game Pass, you will see the appropriate icon.
In addition, any players you meet on a cross-platform session can be added to your friend list, regardless of platform. If you add players who are on the same platform as you, such as Steam, they will be added to your Steam friend list.
However, if they are playing from a different platform, Hello Games has a separate friend list for you to access your cross-platform friends. You can also add friends via friend codes that can be shared across all platforms.
Benefits of playing No Man’s Sky cross-platform
The next question to address is why you even want to play NMS cross-platform. There are a few good reasons for doing so.
- Different players have different device preferences. Some would prefer playing No Man’s Sky on their PlayStation or Xbox devices while others would prefer using a mouse and keyboard on their PC. Regardless of what device you’re playing on, the gameplay experience for all players is roughly the same.
- If you love playing No Man’s Sky and want more friends to play the game with, cross-platform is a completely viable option. Even if they don’t have access to the same device you do, that will not limit your multiplayer options.
- If you have friends that play No Man’s Sky but none of them play on the same platform as you do, cross-platform solves that problem. Unlike how it was with older games, you will no longer need to buy another copy of the game on a different platform because of crossplay.
- If none of your friends play No Man’s Sky, playing cross-platform will allow you to reach a larger, more passionate player base that you can play with. The game has a massive player count across all platforms and playing with them should be easier.
We believe this game is best played with friends and currently, there are several ways to interact with people across different devices on No Man’s Sky, making it even easier to find players to explore the cosmos with.
