Really hope No Man’s Sky lives up to the hype.
I feel a bit better about it now that I know it is going to be a survival game.
It’s very rare for a product to be original in more than one area and still be a success. A good example is electric cars. For quite a long time every new electric car was launched with novel and interesting bodywork design. But it was only when they started to look like every other car on the street that they started to sell well.
NMS is original in having very rich procedurally generated life in a first person environment. If they had also attempted to be original in their gameplay I think they would have been destined for failure. Using a tried and tested, safe gameplay formula is the best path to take when you are pushing the envelope in another technology. It’s why I am glad that Battlescape sounds like it will be following a fairly well trodden gameplay route.
Unfortunately I think NMS sounds too expensive at launch so I probably won’t be getting it until it’s on a Steam sale.
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Be careful who you mention that to 
I wrote on a thread on reddit that I think the game will probably be very repetitive (small studio, extremely large galaxy, don’t think there’s 40 hours worth of unique quests and stuff to make it super interesting all game through) and just more about exploring and not much else, not really making the $60 worth imo. People got really defensive about the game then. It seems that even mentioning that this game might be more than it seems to be gets people into a fit.
//Edit, jimquisition did a bit on the pricing as well:
I can’t really say that I like him that much, I think he’s kinda annoying. Still he takes up some valid points but I think he really misses to point out that the reason indie games usually don’t charge $60 for a game is because they don’t have 50+ people working around the clock for two years making a game, it’s more like 1-5 guys working to make a game that will cost a hell of a lot less in production than a AAA title.
i think they are doing something smart, the survival playerbase is way bigger than space sim playerbase, just look at terraria, minecraft, and starbound. But no multiplayer pretty much kills it, idk how it will sell cause that.
If it’s a survival game, then they’re marketing it very poorly.
you don’t know how that playerbase is, they look for the games, that’s how minecraft sold, they didn’t do any marketing at the start, it was all about “hey, did you play minecraft? it looks odd but it’s good”. Players there are the best ad, i played minecraft before it had actual ads. And for the same reason, they can also kill games as fast as a muon lives, like other several survival games. Terraria is another great example of this in the success side.
Well, minecraft also sold because it was very cheap in its early days (and still is) so kinda hard to compare though. Térraria has also always been pretty cheap,
but if you ask me, even when i don’t like NMS, it’s way more developed than those games, and i actually like Terraria (and starbound) but the development is also cheap, even i can do a Terraria prototype with my not-that-great programming skills
I don’t know if NMS has been showing gameplay videos and stuff somewhere else but I can’t say that there is much info on NMS at all to suggest that. It got prettier graphics, sure, but I haven’t seen much of actual gameplay content to the game other than that you will farm stuff on planets, sell it, upgrade your ship and get closer to the center of the galaxy.
And they’ve also taken a lot of shortcuts when making the planets/solar systems, they’re far from realistic. At least from what I’ve seen.
//edit, sorry if it sounds like I’m bashing the game a lot. These are just my personal opinions about the game and its price range.
The thing I can’t work out is those fleets of starships we see warping in and fighting with other fleets of ships that we see in the trailers. How do they fit in to the gameplay of a survival game?
GRAV has also a lot, if not more, grinding of class XP and resources. Plus it’s plain boring.
While 60€ might seem as a lot, I wouldn’t mind it and rather spend this money on NMS if the content and gameplay is there rather than CoD, Battlefront or some other AAA games that have pretty graphics but get dusted very quickly.
Also, this is about support / faith. Some of us here spent a lot on INovae’s KS, right? Why would we be picky over the final price settled by an indie editor?
Let’s also not forget that being indie doesn’t mean having less than 10 people, as @bikkebakke suggests. It just means you don’t have a big infrastructure backing you up (with money mostly) and making the marketing for you.
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The whining about price here leaves a somewhat sour taste. Who are we to tell devs that we won’t buy their game they invested years of their lives in unless they reduce it to sellout prices?
But I’m a bit torn here myself. Intuitively, 60€ for a PC game is steep. On the other hand, if I add all the Star Citizen backing, the Elite dangerous preorder, the ED lifetime pass as well as the I:BS backing up, that could afford me a modest mid range gaming PC. The HOTAS/pedals and TrackIR are not included, because that would push the hypothetic PC easily above mid range. Much of the backing had the purpose to finally see more space games again. And now that there is one seemingly competent addition to the space/sci-fi genre, I’m unwilling to pay a full game price? Kind of pathetically hypocritical. Especially as I suspect NMS to be the most refined exploration game of all the contenders, with Star Citizen being ages away and only partly procedurally generated, Elite Dangerous having issues with its content and world variety/interaction and I:BS being an “arena” game and therefore most likely not even a contender for exploration enthusiasts.
I’m still pondering the preorder. In the end I might break down and go ahead with it.
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At 30-40€ I’d be happy with 10-15 hours of fun exploration. At 60€ you’re starting to compete at the AA and AAA games level. It doesn’t matter if you’re a true indy or if you’re backed up with a big editor, people aren’t going to care. The question here is, has NMS proven that its content is worth 60€ ?
I think one area where NMS marketing is succeeding really well is at maintaining the mystery aspect. A lot of people, hell I’d even say the majority of the people I see when I browse on the web, are going to get that game mostly because they are curious about it. If I end up buying the game, that’s probably going to be the first reason too. It is original, it has a memorable title, it has a distinctive theme and visual style, so I’d be very surprised if the game sold less than a million copies.
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It’s just another point of resource gathering. Probably higher risk and higher reward. After a fashion, all leveling games are survival games. The only twist is that in most leveling games, you don’t lose your progress.
Unless you’re playing EverQuest.
Curiosity drives me to visit YouTube to watch gameplay videos, not to plunk down $60.
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Considering there are no reviews or previews based on truly extensive play time around, it has proven little more than that the concept has some appeal for exploration players and of course its imo great art style. It might even be styled to be a full priced “AAA” release by the involvement of Sony. Which might of course hurt it, if it doesn’t live up to the promise, which is somewhat doubtful based on how small the dev is. Unless it turns out to be digital addiction like minecraft. 
If it turns out that people feel the 60€ pricetag is unwarranted, there will undoubtedly some backlash.
Add some enthusiasm for space games and a preference for playing and experiencing things yourself (yes, the latter wasn’t uncommon before the rise of Let’s-Players ) and you might just as well buy the game out of curiosity.
You’re much more careful with your money than the average consumer, then.
Consumers! And isn’t price one of the things consumers need to consider when making purchasing decisions? Isn’t it one of the consumer’s major roles, and one of their only powers, in the modern retail marketplace? It’s not like price negotiation is always an option these days. Or even an option on large, automated, online markets.
Plus, extend your question to other consumer items:
Who are we to tell car manufacturers that we won’t buy their cars that they invested years of their lives in unless they reduce the price?
Who are we to tell farmers that we wont’ buy their produce that they invested years of their lives in unless they reduce the price?
Who are we to tell housing developers that we won’t buy/rent their houses/condos/apartments that they’ve invested years of their lives in unless they reduce the price?
I think it’s perfectly fair to say “I won’t buy that Roomba unless I find it on sale”. Hell, my mother treats canned soup that way!
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Also, a pretty big cut of that money is most probably going to Sony rather than the developers…
And steam keeps how much? 30%? So, it might be a 30/50/20 split between Steam/Sony/Hello. And it can be even worse in a brick and mortar store. They often keep 50% of the retail price, so it could be 50/30/20 in that case.