Yeah - the author said "no other game is offering this!", and my first thought was "but Elite: Dangerous offers large swaths of this stuff and has for some time

Yeah - the author said "no other game is offering this!", and my first thought was "but Elite: Dangerous offers large swaths of this stuff and has for some time." Granted, it doesn't do everything No Man's Sky does, and it has its own gameplay issues (mainly a lack of depth to the universe resulting in boredom). But No Man's Sky doesn't exist in a vaccuum. There are lots of other games at least trying to do what it does, and in some cases, succeeding. Star Citizen, if it is not vaporware, may become another good example.