Is No Man’s Sky cross-platform? Cross-play compatibility and cross-saving, explained

Traversing the stars is a beautiful experience, but it can get lonely out there on your own. No Man’s Sky is home to many features that are best shared with others, including base-building, Expeditions, and Discoveries—which is why players may be wondering about cross-play compatibility.

Does NMS have crossplay?

NMS has cross-play, but there’s a catch: The full functionality of the cross-platform feature is only available for players on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation—not for Nintendo Switch users. Although the Switch allows some cross-play functionality, it’s limited to NMS’ Discoveries feature.

Developer Hello Games added cross-play to NMS in 2020 when the open-world game first arrived on Xbox Game Pass. This functionality allowed players to join lobbies with their friends on other platforms, whether you’re on Xbox, PlayStation, or PC, making it so players could run around on planets and fly their ships side-by-side.

NMS arrived on Nintendo Switch two years later in 2022, but players noticed they weren’t able to group up with players from other lobbies. On NMS’ Nintendo storefront page, it says players can upload and share Discoveries with other users—a unique feature that allows players to permanently name planets, solar systems, fauna, and flora—but it says nothing about grouping up in a lobby with your friends. Users on Reddit have recently reported that if you’re playing on Switch, you won’t be able to see any other player like you would on other platforms.

How to use cross-platform features in NMS

If you’re on PlayStation, Xbox, or PC, enabling Multiplayer from the Network menu of the game’s options will allow you to see players from every platform, including your own. To make it easier to identify which device your friends or other people are on, NMS has separate icons for different platforms.

How to enable multiplayer on NMS

For those on the three crossplay platforms, if you want to see other Interlopers roaming the galaxy, you can enable multiplayer by following these steps:

1. Open your Options menu
2. Under “Network,” the first option will be “Multiplayer.”
3. Ensure this option is set to “Enabled” so you can encounter other users throughout your journey around the universe.
   1. If you set this to “Disabled,” you can still group up with friends.

In addition, any players you meet on a cross-platform session can be added to your friend list, regardless of platform. If you add players who are on the same platform as you, such as Steam, they will be added to your Steam friend list.

How to join a friend’s game in NMS

If you’re on PC, PlayStation, or Xbox and want to join a lobby to play with your friends on other consoles, follow these steps:

1. On NMS’s main menu, select “Join Friends.”
2. Choose the option at the bottom to reveal your NMS Friend Code.
   1. Be careful not to share this code with anyone you don’t want to play with.
3. Send the code to a friend with a copy of the game on another platform.
4. Have them add you as a friend from the same menu, under the “Add No Man’s Sky Friend” option.
5. After they add you as a friend, your session should appear under their “Available Sessions” list.

NMS and cross-saving, explained

Cross-play often gets confused with cross-saving, which makes a ton of sense given the nomenclature. Cross-save, however, refers to the ability to access the same save file across multiple platforms. This feature was notably absent from NMS until Nov. 7, 2024, when Hello Games introduced the feature in a blog post.

In the post, the developer explained the amount of work that went into adding the feature to the game and why it took so long. The TLDR is that with the more platforms and players, the more work required to get those save files safely transferred from one console to the next. That’s why in the first couple of weeks after the announcement, cross-save functionality will only be available to a subset of players who will need to register through a closed beta period.

How to use cross-save in NMS

To participate in NMS’ cross-save beta, players will need to register their interest through an official Hello Games website. From there, the developer will select a handful of players. In the weeks following the beta period, the pool will be opened to all players, who will then be able to access their other save files from the game’s start screen.