The chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, Shawn Layden, discusses the controversy surrounding Hello Games' space exploration title No Man's Sky.

As many gamers would likely agree, Hello Games' No Man's Sky has had one of the strangest post-launch lifespans ever since its release. After being one of the most hyped and talked about games in recent memory prior to its availability, it has now become one of the most disliked titles in existence, with its Steam reviews being "Overwhelmingly Negative," which is the marketplace's lowest rating possible. As a matter of fact, After numerous complaints were submitted after its launch in August, Advertising Standards Authority has launched an investigation into the game’s advertising to determine if the developer falsely represented the final product in its marketing.

Of course, with so much controversy still surrounding No Man's Sky, it's almost impossible for gaming fans to not discuss the situation. Interestingly enough, the chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, Shawn Layden, recently shared his opinion on the matter during an appearance on the Live with YouTube Gaming show last night, as seen in the video below.

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As Layden put it, Hello Games had an "incredible vision" for what it wanted to make, adding that No Man's Sky is something that had never been done in gaming, for the title's planets' and creatures' creations are generated procedurally. The executive went on to say that also remarked that the team at Hello Games was quite small, as there were only six core members who developed the game, and the studio had a "very huge ambition."

Shawn Layden isn't the first Sony executive to comment on No Man's Sky's fall from grace. As it happens, Sony President Shuhei Yoshida chimed in not too long ago to declare that the main reason that the space exploration title received such poor reception was due to Sean Murray and his team at Hello Games promising more than it could offer.

Several months ago, a lot of people who had played No Man's Sky were miffed at the large amount of certain features that it lacked, as well as the multiple instances of game breaking bugs, glitches, and crashes, so they took to online message boards to complain. Not to mention, following this major player backlash over these issues, Steam, Sony, and Amazon issued refunds to fans regardless of playtime.

Taking all of this into consideration, whatever one makes of the actual content of No Man's Sky, it's safe to say that everyone can agree that Hello Games has had a rough go of it as of late. Just recently, in fact, the studio was embroiled in a huge fiasco involving a tweet from the company's Twitter account stating that the game was a "mistake," which has understandably left fans and the industry at large bewildered to say the least.

No Man's Sky is available now for PC and PlayStation 4.

Source: gameslice — YouTube (via DualShockers, GameSpot)