No Man's Sky has gone from strength to strength over the past few years, and it seems like the next big update may be on the horizon. It's difficult to talk about No Man's Sky without making reference to its disastrous state at launch, but the general consensus surrounding the game as of writing is that it eventually met and exceeded expectations through iterative updates.
No Man's Sky is featured as a PS VR2 launch title, releasing worldwide on February 22, 2023, at which point it will be available on every modern platform. The major 4.0 update, Waypoint, saw the game arrive on the Switch, albeit with some restrictions when compared to other platforms.
While it might seem like an innocuous tweet to the uninitiated, Hello Games founder Sean Murray habitually teases major updates for No Man's Sky by tweeting emojis. A man of few words, his Twitter timeline contains a lot of emojis but mostly in reaction to gorgeous screenshots from No Man's Sky or other news related to it. The teaser tweets he is famous for are usually standalone, containing only a single emoji that is in some way connected to the next update. This time around, Sean Murray has tweeted a snowflake emoji, sending the community into a frenzy of speculation and excitement.
Sean Murray's hints are usually highly cryptic, and while there are plausible theories abound, it's nearly impossible to know what the next update might contain. One highly requested feature for No Man's Sky is multiple biomes on each planet, including polar ice caps, but more conservative theories for the next update posit a new expedition or updates to the weather system. Examples of Sean's previous teasers are an orange (a rather cryptic clue hinting at the Origins update) and a compass (for the No Man's Sky Waypoint 4.0 update.)
The timing of Sean Murray's teaser tweet could mean that the next big update for No Man's Sky will arrive with the launch of PS VR2, but the timing between his tweets and the arrival of the update isn't always consistent, so fans should manage their expectations accordingly and not get carried away by some of the wild speculation from the more idealistic members of the community. The last major No Man's Sky update left some fans disappointed, but hopefully that will be remedied with whatever it is that Hello Games has in store for the game.
No Man's Sky is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.