No Man's Sky Lands on iPhone and iPad October 28, With Multiplayer Left Out

Hello Games announced on October 12 that No Man's Sky is coming to iPhone and iPad on October 28, with pre-orders already open on the Apple App Store. The announcement describes the release as the full game with more than forty major updates included, and it will be free to try at launch. Multiplayer is not supported. On iPhone, Planetary Settlements require an iPhone 15 Pro or newer; the studio did not give an iPad-specific threshold.

What the studio announced on October 12

The post sets out two dates: pre-orders opened on October 12 as part of Apple App Store's Indie Games Week, and the release follows on October 28. That leaves a two-week pre-order window with no other milestone in it. The studio also says the project started about two years ago, shortly after it announced that No Man's Sky was coming to Mac, when a member of the team suggested the game could run on an iPhone. The post describes the reaction inside the studio as disbelief until the first hands-on session.

The port rests on how the game builds its world. No Man's Sky generates its universe at runtime, so the device you hold creates the environment around you. The studio treats that as the reason a phone can run the game at all, and the same property keeps the download small.

Which iPhones and iPads can run it

The studio says it wanted to reach the widest possible iPhone and iPad audience, and it notes that PC and console games which do make the jump to mobile usually require the newest iOS hardware. Planetary Settlements, which let a player run a settlement on a planet surface, is the one feature for which the post gives an iPhone-specific newer-device threshold.

Multiplayer is the larger omission. On other platforms the Space Anomaly can hold up to 32 players, according to the studio's own feature list. None of that arrives on iOS. Hello Games draws the comparison itself, noting that the original Nintendo Switch version shipped with limitations and that the Switch 2 edition which followed is a much expanded version.

What carries over from the console and PC versions

The build includes over forty major updates, among them COSMOS, the 7.0 update released in September that added space station management, alliances and orbital bases, and Voyagers, which introduced buildable big-rig starships. The newest entry on the studio's news page is Cosmos 7.06, published on October 5, so the mobile version arrives into a release that is still being patched. The post credits Voyagers with pushing player numbers to their highest levels since launch, which is the studio's account of its own game.

Touch controls could not simply be inherited, because the game moves between on-planet exploration, flight, first person, third person, vehicles and mechs. The studio says it rebuilt them from the ground up. Controllers work, the game can be cast to a television, and the iPad version accepts a mouse and keyboard. The download is under 4GB. The post also says the studio worked on battery life and heat, and that it expects long play sessions to stay comfortable on a phone.

The release date falls inside the game's tenth anniversary event. The studio opened the Our Journey Continues expedition on September 16 and said it would run for approximately six weeks, a window that reaches roughly the end of October and overlaps the iOS launch. The announcement does not say whether mobile players can take part in it.

Where the announcement stays silent

Price is the first gap. The post says the release will be free to try but never states what the full version costs, and the store link leads to a regional App Store page.

Save transfer is the second. Hello Games operates a cross-save system that moves progress between connected platforms, and its documentation names PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and Mac. Its terms require a Steam, PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo account. iOS appears in neither place, so whether an existing Traveller can bring a save to a phone is unconfirmed.

The next gap covers the two missing features. The studio says it will support the iOS version based on how many people play it, which leaves multiplayer and settlement support on older devices as questions of adoption. There is no date, no device list for a future version, and no statement about whether the mobile build follows the same update schedule as the console releases.

Android does not appear in the post at all, so this release covers Apple hardware only. Readers on a phone or tablet running anything other than iOS or iPadOS have no announced option.

What the Switch precedent does and does not predict

Hello Games chose the Switch comparison, and it is the closest thing to guidance in the post. The first Switch release arrived with restrictions, the studio kept working on it, and the Switch 2 edition is substantially larger. Applying that pattern to iOS would mean a fuller version later, but the post attaches no plan, timeline or commitment to it.