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'No Man's Sky' fits its ridiculously huge galaxy into a refreshingly small install size

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In an era when video games, particularly large open-world releases, routinely take up more than 40GB of space from your hard drive, and only grow larger with content updates over time, No Man’s Sky developer Sean Murray has some very good news for you: don’t start deleting games on your PlayStation 4 just yet.

“For those asking — size of No Man’s Sky on disc is just 6 GB. A lot of that is audio,” Murray said in a tweet.

The game finally went gold on July 7, representing the end of a very long journey which began in December 2013 at Spike’s VGX awards.

Audio was the primary reason for the large file size of another online multiplayer game, Titanfall, back in 2013. The PC version of the game launched with 35 GB of uncompressed audio, which developer Respawn said would allow the game to work with weaker hardware.

No Man’s Sky is always online in a randomly generated open world, so the small install size is not a huge surprise. Still, other online-only games such as The Division and Destiny had install sizes that rival any single-player AAA release. For studio Hello Games to be able to say they’ve fit the most expansive game ever into just 6 GB is a nice boasting point, at the very least.

Murray also revealed that the studio is already working on the game’s first update, but he didn’t disclose exactly what it entailed.

Originally scheduled to launch in June, No Man’s Sky suffered a last-minute delay to ensure it could live up to players’ lofty expectations.

“This is the hardest working, most talented team I’ve ever worked with, and I’m so proud of what we’re doing,” Murray said at the time. “For all sakes though, we got one shot to make this game and we can’t mess it up.”

No Man’s Sky launches for PlayStation 4 and PC on August 9.

Gabe Gurwin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
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