No Man’s Sky lands on iPhone and iPad October 28 — full universe, no multiplayer, $19.99 to unlock. Preorders opened Monday, October 12, as part of Apple’s App Store Indie Games Week. The game requires iPhone 11 or later, or iPad Air (3rd generation) and newer. Installation size is under 5GB, a figure Hello Games calls ‘surprisingly scant’ given the scale of the procedurally generated cosmos. It’s free to try at launch, with a one-time $19.99 in-app purchase to unlock the full experience, AppleInsider reported. The Verge did not state a price, only that it would be ‘free to try’. No Indian pricing has been announced. This isn’t a stripped-down port. As Hello Games CEO Sean Murray wrote in an official blog post: ‘I guess I should say this is not No Man’s Sky Lite.’ The iOS version includes every major update since launch. Including September’s COSMOS expansion and last year’s Voyagers update, which added customizable big-rig starships. What’s missing matches the original Nintendo Switch release: no multiplayer, no planetary settlements. Murray likened the iOS debut to that Switch launch, and said future support will follow player feedback and usage numbers, just as it did on Switch 2. Touch controls are newly designed for mobile screens. IPad users can also plug in controllers, use mouse-and-keyboard, or cast gameplay to a TV. Battery life and thermal management were top priorities during development, Murray said. ‘we’re super proud that No Man’s Sky can be enjoyed for really long comfortable play sessions.’ That optimization built on work begun for the Mac port in 2023, which itself relied on Apple’s Metal 3 API and MetalFX upscaling framework. Hello Games spent nearly two years adapting the engine, with Apple engineers assisting in the second year. Murray told AppleInsider in 2023 that iOS was ‘something we always consider’, but noted the shift demanded new thinking about interface, power constraints, and how mobile players actually engage with games. Ten years after its controversial 2016 debut, No Man’s Sky now spans PC, Mac, PlayStation, Xbox, VR headsets, Switch, and soon. Pockets and coffee tables.