No. I disagree. The interviewer didn't get a straight answer to his question so was forced to ask it again:

One of the most asked question about the game is about multiplayer. If I travel to a planet on my game and at the same time, my friend goes to the same planet on his game. Would we be able to play together?

This would have been the correct answer:

Yes.

The matchmaking algorithm prioritises the formation of lobbies containing friends whenever practicable. However, there are only a limited number of slots in any such lobby. So you might find you have warped into a different version of the same star system because your friend filled the last available slot ahead of you. Consequently, the game was forced to create an additional lobby for you and any latecomers that may arrive in it. Under these extremely rare circumstances you wouldn't be able to meet up with your friend until they warped out and back in again, giving the matchmaking algorithm another chance to unite you together in the less populated supplemental lobby.

However, meeting your friend would rely on a lot of communication and you need to bear in mind that everyone is anonymous in the game, so it isn't like Destiny where you go to a planet and see your friend's PSN ID floating over their head confirming their identity. It isn't an MMO like DayZ where you have a lot of players in one reasonably small space engaged in PvPvE with emergent narratives that come out of it, as the players are spread out across an entire Galaxy. It isn't like Watch_Dogs where players can enter your single player game and it only resembles Dark Souls in that our intention is for its enigmatic lore to be uncovered through the collaborative investigations of the No Man's Sky community. It isn't really all that much like Journey unless you make whoever random person you run into on your travels to the centre of the Galaxy your PSN friend to ensure that you don't get split up as you warp together into increasingly populated systems.

So, it is an MMO, but in such a minor way insofar as you can share discoveries and the location of useful resources to help those that follow your trailblazing path that it is an MMO in the same way that Twitter is an MMO. Don't think of this as being Star Citizen, Elite: Dangerous, or EVE: Online. It simply isn't necessary to the express the theme of exploration to attach that label to it.

Note, how Bungie took care to lower people's expectations with Destiny by saying it wasn't an MMOFPSRPG, but a SWS - or "Shared World Shooter" - and yet it got misrepresented by the media as being World of Warcraft in space, and people then got disappointed at its comparative lack of content and griped about the inflated cost of its expansions when Destiny actually represents better value for money by freeing its players from the burden of a monthly subscription, it is only the above average cost of the DLC that is used to fund the always available servers.

The situation with No Man's Sky is different again as far as a value proposition goes, because it has some of the qualities of an MMO, but lacks the burden of a monthly subscription that these titles generally have, also those who have complained about the price overlook the fact that it effectively includes a Season Pass, except the additional content isn't downloaded, but discovered as they journey inward. The team here at Hello Games have spent the majority of their time ensuring that the game is packed full of things that have an impact on the way you can play the game as you continue your exploration. Cool stuff that we are deliberately keeping secret rather than putting it as a list of bullet points on the back of the box, because... again... we aim to elicit the rare sense of unexpected discovery that comes from genuine exploration and not ruin these surprises with a bunch of spoilers. We feel confident that enough people will buy the game at launch and those who have misgivings, or doubts about its value for money, will come around to realising that maybe this game has something for them when they have heard another wild stories about what they have missed finding out for themselves firsthand. I expect a lot of people will be sceptical of the depth of this game until they watch some extended playthroughs on Twitch.tv and that's fine by me, because I understand from having worked on AAA games in the past that consumers are cautious with how they spend their money and like to know as much as possible about a game that they plan to 100% complete to justify its cost. However, no one can 100% complete No Man's Sky and even if we were to tell them absolutely everything that was in the game to secure a risk free purchase, they'd hate us for ruining all the surprises we had laid out in their path to the centre.

All that being said, the Galaxy is so huge and everyone starts spread out from each other around its edge that people shouldn't buy No Man's Sky with a view to playing with their friend. It's not technically impossible. As I have explained the game tries to help you to do this, but the distances involved are enormous and a commitment is required that... well, in my eyes... seems to ignore everything else of interest the game has to offer. After all, there are lots of cooperative space games that succeed in one area or another, however I feel that the focus of No Man's Sky is not done better by another title, and people shouldn't confuse its community collaboratively exploring its mysterious alien Galaxy as being some kind of ultimate intergalactic MMORTSFPSRPG megagame, simply because on cursory inspection so many aspects of that can be seemingly satisfied by wikis that list all of its features but fail to go into any real depth because they are based on a remark torn out of an interview that got no follow up questions.

People are going to get disappointed if they expect to play with their friends. They are more likely to make some new friends during their journey and their likelihood of meeting another player will increase exponentially as they reach the same mutual destination. Yet, that journey is gruelling and may not suit everyone, so the team have worked hard to let people play the game anyway that they wish - anyway, except base building... for that you should check out GalactiCraft.

Obviously, that is too bloody long and Sean Murray is understandably trying to push what his game is rather than talk about what his game isn't and why it fails to be what many assume that it was. Yet, the question didn't get answered, so the interviewer was completely justified in asking it again in the hopes of getting it addressed specifically, on a technical basis, however unlikely:

So you are saying that if my friend travels to the same place I am at we could play together for a while?

Sean's first answer didn't entirely rule out the possibility, but was vague, a clarification was needed. This would have been the correct answer:

Yes.

Obviously, there is some difficult 'hand wavey' stuff to explain about spill over servers acting rather like parallel universes within a multiverse, but given how unlikely meeting anyone is the circumstances of you arriving at the same star system as your friend only to be bumped into another dimension are very unlikely, due to the general low server population in each instance. Indeed, it is only worth mentioning when being thorough about warping into the centre of the Galaxy where player population will naturally peak. So, his answer "No..." is incorrect and misleading, but ultimately inconsequential.

I only write about it here because people on this subreddit are so obsessed about these technicalities.

:-)