No Man’s Sky’s first few seconds baffle new PS4 owners

No Man’s Sky threw some PlayStation 4 gamers for a loop only a few seconds into the game.

The game boots up to a blank white screen. The word "initialize" floats in the center of the screen. Beneath it is a small circle with a square inside of it. And then nothing:

No Man’s Square

Some players thought the game froze. Others thought it was still loading or downloading. Turns out it was simply waiting for the player to hold the square button.

For longtime PlayStation 4 players, the square icon is an obvious direction to press the square button. But those unfamiliar with the system — and some may have bought one for No Man’s Sky, as it’s not on Xbox One — ended up waiting for something to happen. At least one player rebooted their system, thinking the game had frozen.

"Dude I thought I was the only one," wrote one Redditor. "I sat here for a good while thinking it was installing."

Redditor XxAuthenticxX created a thread on the No Man’s Sky subreddit entitled "Hold square on initialize," saving a lot of confused players a reboot or two.

Here are a few of my favorite comments:

• "Saw this guy streaming a few days back, he reset his PS4 cause he thought it had crashed lol."
• "WTF WASTED 10 MINUTES OF MY LIFE!"
• "I just bought a PS4 to play No Man’s Sky, usually an Xbox guy so when I seen the square I didn’t think of the button lol."
• "Honestly, I had to move my couch closer to my 50" TV because that square looked so tiny I just thought it was a logo and I had to wait for the game to load. After 2 hours of playing (maybe it was 3), I moved my couch even closer. They sure did make the text as small as possible lol."

Chalk it up to tired eyes and tiny icons, or maybe the excitement of finally being able to play a hotly anticipated game.

The good news is that now that you’ve read this, you won’t make the same mistake.

Of course, this is only for PS4 players. The Windows PC version will likely have its own start screen when it launches this Friday. As Redditor Chwhitby said, "Just wait till PC players have to press the any key."

Fox via Frinkiac

Source: Polygon – Full