PC, Xbox, PS, & Switch: Exploring No Man's Sky performance on different platforms

Modified Jun 14, 2024 21:55 IST

No Man's Sky is a survival space exploration game available on all platforms: PC, Xbox, PS, and Switch. The game has lately become popular with Hello Games seeing a spike in player count across all platforms mainly because of the 5 reasons to try out No Man's Sky in 2024. Having been under development for eight years, it’s safe to say that the game is well-optimized and is expected to run smoothly across different platforms. However, the game's performance greatly varies depending on the platform that's running it.

This article will explore No Man’s Sky's performance on different platforms like PC, Xbox, PS, and Switch.

No Man's Sky performance on PC

No Man’s Sky was originally released for PC and is well-optimized for it. However, how well it performs will vastly depend on the specifications of your PC. Here are the system requirements for No Man’s Sky on PC:

No Man's Sky minimum requirements

Memory: 8 GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 or Radeon RX 470
CPU: Intel Core i3-3210
File Size: 15 GB
OS: Windows 7/8.1/10 (64-bit versions)

No Man's Sky recommended specs

Memory: 16 GB
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790
File Size: 15 GB
OS: Windows 10

While the game can run on almost every PC out there, to consistently get higher frame rates, you’ll need a powerful GPU. You can easily get 144 FPS on a Nvidia RTX 3050 playing at 1080p resolution.

Also read: 5 fastest ways to make units in No Man's Sky

No Man's Sky performance on Xbox

Players have reportedly faced a lot of issues running No Man's Sky on both Xbox One and Xbox Series X. Xbox Series X initially runs the game at 60fps but due to a memory leak issue, the framerate drops significantly after just 30mins of gameplay. This is a common problem and while lowering settings and FOV did seem to help a little, the problem resurfaced later. Some players have also faced occasional game crashes.

Xbox One on the other hand performs worse in running the game. While 30 fps is the bare minimum a game needs to have to play it, Xbox One runs No Man’s Sky at a lower FPS closer to 20 frames per second. This makes the game unplayable and is not recommended to run No Man’s Sky in Xbox One.

No Man's Sky performance on PS

No Man's Sky performs differently on the PS4 and PS5 depending on the NMS update. On the PS4, the game runs at 30 fps for the most part. However, there are massive framerate drops below the 20 FPS mark when you enter a new planet or move at high speed with your starship. It seems the performance dips when the game is actively generating content.

The PS5 also has this same issue but it achieves 60 fps for the most part. The framerate drop at certain in-game situations is to be expected even on the PS5.

Also read: No Man's Sky: 5 things the game doesn't tell you

No Man's Sky performance on Switch

Nintendo Switch – OLED Model Splatoon 3 Edition (Image via Nintendo)

As expected, the graphics performance on the Switch isn’t great. While playing NMS on a mobile device in itself is impressive, framerate drops are still experienced and players have come to get used to it. The framerate drops on the switch only occur during combat situations. It is more consistent during mining and building. There is also a texture update delay while mining. In spite of these issues, players still play No Man's Sky on the switch for the Gyro.

That’s everything you need to know about the performance of No Man's Sky across different platforms. For more No Man's Sky news and guides, check out our other articles:

Edited by Ritoban "Veloxi" Paul