No Man’s Sky to get weekly challenges and updates

New exploration focused community missions and weekly updates will be completely free.

As announced last week, No Man’s Sky is getting a huge new update called Next to coincide with the release date of the much awaited Xbox One version, which is due to launch tomorrow, the 24th of July. The update brings a vast amount of new content, including multiplayer, enhanced base building mechanics and a lot more.

Sean Murray, the creator of No Man’s Sky, spoke to IGN, assuring players that it’s “not a loot box thing, it’s not a microtransaction thing, it’s 100% free”. The weekly updates will bring even more to No Man’s Sky on top of the Next update, including community missions, keeping the focus on the new multiplayer additions to the game.

In order to allow players to easily enjoy the weekly content, developer Hello Games has created the Galactic Atlas website, tracking points of interest and in game events. The new challenges are likely to focus on exploration, (as with much of the game) and participating players will be rewarded with items, though the nature of this is not yet known. It’s expected that the new weekly content updates and challenges will begin a week after Next launches.

The No Man’s Sky Next update launches on Steam, PS4, and Xbox One on the 24th of July.