At the end of May we learned that No Man’s Sky would be coming to Xbox Game Pass for console and PC sometime in June. We now know when in June that is – tomorrow. Oh, and there’s crossplay.

This double-barrelled surprise announcement comes from the appropriately titled “Introducing crossplay for No Man’s Sky” which was just released on the game’s website.

“…we’ve been busily working on something else in secret for the last few months. Something to allow everyone in the community to benefit from the influx of new players that Game Pass brings… We are excited to be able to announce that, starting tomorrow, PlayStation 4 players, Xbox One players and PC players will all be able to explore, journey, survive, build, and trade together. Excitingly, No Man’s Sky is joining what is at the moment a fairly small group of games which support cross-platform multiplayer,” part of the announcement reads.

This is a rather ingenious move on the part of developers Hello Games that should make the most out of launching on a new platform. For players it’s a boost for existing ones who want to join up with friends on other machines and for newcomers looking for guidance. Really a win for everyone involved.

Good job Hello Games. It’s a bit crazy to remember the trainwreck that was the “multiplayer” of this game at launch and the work that has gone into it so far. Even crazier when you read the patch notes about this change which state: “Replaced the entire network backend, so that players can now make multiplayer connections across all platforms.”

The full patch notes can be read here.

You can see in the header image above that players on the same platform as you will feature a logo for it (Steam in this case) while those from other platforms will have a controller icon.

We really didn’t enjoy this game at launch, but we’re excited to get back into it tomorrow to see how far it has come in four years.