When No Man's Sky first appeared and started getting public attention, it was a clear attempt to deliver one of the most immersive spacefaring games to date. The concept sounded like Minecraft in space, and in many ways, that's exactly what it is. No Man's Sky offers players a ton of creative freedom in charting and modifying the galaxy as they explore it, building anything they want so long as they have the resources. One major way that No Man's Sky intends to wrap players up in the astronaut life is by delivering a truly huge universe to explore. Five years after its launch, it's still hard to believe exactly how huge the No Man's Sky universe is.
Procedural generation of the world is another thing No Man's Sky shares with Minecraft. However, unlike Minecraft's wholly random individual worlds, Hello Games' simulated universe actually has a pretty good picture of how many planets there are in No Man's Sky, and it's a staggering amount. There are over 18 quintillion planets in the No Man's Sky universe -- to be precise, there are 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 fully fleshed-out worlds that anyone in the game can find and explore, and they're all very reasonably to scale with real planets.
The Incredible Scale of No Man's Sky
It's frankly hard to describe just how many planets that is. One good way of thinking of it is in reference to our actual planet: if every single person on Earth played No Man's Sky and the game's planets were all distributed evenly, every person on earth would get more than 2 billion planets all to themselves in No Man's Sky. That's a truly endless amount of terrain to explore and customize and explore to every player's will, and easily too much for any one person to thoroughly explore in one lifetime. If No Man's Sky's servers go offline someday, the vast majority of its universe will probably still be completely untouched.
When No Man's Sky was first made public, Hello Games explained that while the game was technically multiplayer, odds were good that players could go through the whole game without ever running into each other just because of its massive scale. Looking at the numbers proves that Hello Games wasn't joking. It's very easy for a No Man's Sky player to choose a corner of the universe and make it entirely their own, diligently building up whatever they want for their own enjoyment without worrying about coming across other players.
No Man's Sky is Worth Living In
The real value of the universe in No Man's Sky doesn't come from the sheer number of planets, though. Its value stems from the content that Hello Games has diligently added to the game over the years. Each planet out of the 18 quintillion is filled to the brim with engaging objectives, valuable resources, and environmental details that make every planet unique. Although No Man's Sky had a famously rocky launch, Hello Games' humble response and persistent work afterwards have made No Man's Sky almost unrecognizable from its near-total lack of content at launch.
Hello Games' work on the whole of No Man's Sky is what makes the quintillions of planets really worth it. There's an endless list of possible worlds that players can find in No Man's Sky, which is exactly the kind of game players were hoping for when it first game out. The survival game's universe is still expanding, sometimes getting billions more planets in updates, which servers as a good reminder that there's no way No Man's Sky fans will ever totally chart the game's universe. It's arguably the best simulation of outer space out there, if only for its faithfulness to outer space's incredible size. Considering how many planets the game has to offer, there's always another adventure around the corner in No Man's Sky.
No Man's Sky is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
