Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony Worldwide Studios, has reflected on the bumpy launch of No Man’s Sky while chatting with Eurogamer, where the industry veteran conceded that he “understands some of the criticisms” being levelled against Lead Designer Sean Murray and Hello Games in general.
Soon after the procedurally generated space sim touched down for PS4 and PC, a handful of early adopters took issue with missing features – multiplayer in particular – that had purportedly been omitted from the finished article despite featuring prominently throughout the massive No Man’s Sky marketing campaign.
That’s a backlash that Yoshida-san empathizes with during an interview with Eurogamer, stating, “I understand some of the criticisms especially Sean Murray is getting, because he sounded like he was promising more features in the game from day one. It wasn’t a great PR strategy, because he didn’t have a PR person helping him, and in the end he is an indie developer.”
This, coupled with technical teething problems, resulted in a somewhat turbulent launch for No Man’s Sky, which was only exacerbated by Hello Games’ radio silence. That said, Yoshida rubbishes reports that this backlash has tainted the PlayStation brand in any way:
“I am super happy with the game actually, and I’m amazed with the sales the game has gotten, so I’m not the right person to judge if it has ‘harmed’ the PlayStation brand,” he said. “I personally don’t think so.”
No Man’s Sky launched last month for PS4 and PC and, despite scoring relatively well in our review, failed to live up to the feverish hype that preceded it.
Published: Sep 16, 2016 09:15 am