• SEGA Officially Announces Western Release of PSO2 in 2013

    Today, SEGA will officially announce that they will be bringing Phantasy Star Online 2 to North America and Europe, with a release date in early 2013. In addition, the official teaser site should be going live at www.pso2.com sometime this morning. Our friends at SEGA were kind enough to give us a heads up on this great news, and PSO-World is proud to be the first site to share it with the Phantasy Star community. Here is a copy of the official press release, check it out:


    SEGA ANNOUNCES THE WESTERN RELEASE OF PHANTASY STAR ONLINE 2 SEGA’s Epic Free-to-Play Multiplayer Action RPG Coming to North America and Europe in Early 2013

    SAN FRANCISCO & LONDON – July 9th, 2012 – SEGA® of America, Inc. and SEGA® Europe Ltd today announced that free-to-play multiplayer action RPG Phantasy Star Online 2 will be coming to North America and Europe in 2013. For a first look at this new entry in the legendary Phantasy Star series, check out the official Phantasy Star Online 2 teaser site at www.pso2.com.

    “Phantasy Star Online was a revolutionary game when it was released, and we want to make sure that its successor in the series is every bit as ambitious,” said Chris Olson, Vice President of Digital Business at SEGA of America. “We look forward to introducing Phantasy Star Online 2’s unique, easy-to-access multiplayer action to the rest of the world next year!”

    “The number one thing we want to provide players in Phantasy Star Online 2 is an adventure that changes every time they log in. Just as great table-top RPG experiences revolve around imaginative and unexpected encounters, we want players to consistently be surprised as they explore dungeons and undertake quests,” added Satoshi Sakai, Phantasy Star Online 2 Producer at SEGA of Japan.

    Over ten years have passed since the release of the boundary-breaking Dreamcast hit, Phantasy Star Online, and SEGA is poised to continue the Phantasy Star series’ multiplayer legacy on PCs worldwide with Phantasy Star Online 2. In the Year 238, the New Era of Light, players will join a new band of Arcs in the fight against mysterious D-Arkers, embarking on another epic adventure of infinite possibilities!

    Phantasy Star Online 2’s features include:

    • Deep sci-fi fantasy universe filled with lush landscapes, extraordinary creatures, and epic adventures
    • Revolutionary real-time combat and third-person action with devastating combos and counters to master
    • Flexible, class-based leveling system that lets players define their own play-style with distinctive melee, ranged, and magic weapon types
    • Randomized dungeon maps and unexpected mid-quest encounters that ensure each quest is different for each player
    • Deep character creation system with a nearly limitless number of potential appearances
    • Three degrees of humanity to experience across three unique races: the versatile Humans, spiritually-powered Newmen, and artificial CAST

    For more information about Phantasy Star Online 2, visit the official site at www.pso2.com.

    For more news, follow SEGA on Twitter @SEGA (http://twitter.com/phantasystar) or “like” us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/sega.pso2).

    About SEGA® of America, Inc. SEGA® of America, Inc. is the American arm of Tokyo, Japan-based SEGA® Corporation, a worldwide leader in interactive entertainment both inside and outside the home. The company develops, publishes and distributes interactive entertainment software products for a variety of hardware platforms including PC, wireless devices, and those manufactured by Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony Computer Entertainment. SEGA® of America’s Web site is located at www.sega.com.

    About SEGA® Europe Ltd. SEGA® Europe Ltd. is the European Distribution arm of Tokyo, Japan-based SEGA® Corporation, and a worldwide leader in interactive entertainment both inside and outside the home. The company develops and distributes interactive entertainment software products for a variety of hardware platforms including PC, wireless devices, and those manufactured by Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. SEGA’s global website site is located at www.sega.com.

    The official teaser trailer for PSO2's western launch will also be going live sometime Monday morning via YouTube: Official PSO2 Announcement Trailer. Be sure to check it out once the video has been made available to the public!


    Be sure to share your thoughts on this exciting announcement in our PSO2 Forums, where there is already a great deal of discussion going on about the Japanese release of the game

    Comments 140 Comments
    1. slipknotver's Avatar
      slipknotver -
      thats a stupid question.
    1. slipknotver's Avatar
      slipknotver -
      this JP server doesn't seem to be all that great. I have only been able to log in twice now. most of the time i get error messages no.242 and no.640 what is up with this?
    1. thekkeffect's Avatar
      thekkeffect -
      awesome news!...now im just hoping i can use the same character i have now but either way by that time i might wanna start a new char so either way is fine..haha
    1. thekkeffect's Avatar
      thekkeffect -
      its mostly about the gameplay at least for me. about hunting for weapons beating up monsters n leveling up ur char n mag is what pso is about. i could care less about the voices or story to be honest i usually just skip those cutscenes anyways..haha
    1. AncientRemnants's Avatar
      AncientRemnants -
      Wait... isnt the JP version still in open beta... so they might actually be released a few months apart... and if it is in the beta, wont your characters be deleted anyway when the beta is over?
    1. Fontes's Avatar
      Fontes -
      It's been officially released this very month.
    1. AncientRemnants's Avatar
      AncientRemnants -
      ahh i see now
    1. pso2love's Avatar
      pso2love -
      Comment I agree with from another site:
      "So nice to see US/EU cares about the game’s first impression.
      I mean look at that “teaser” site, it’s like an aspiring HTML developer (that cannot code just yet) slapped it together.
      Remember the “teaser” site PSO2 JP used?
      Why couldn’t they copy paste that over to the US/EU “teaser” site?
      This, to me, shows how much the company actually cares about international release. It’s not even about first impression anymore, it’s just releasing it to shut the rest of the world up. “Here, have your piece of meat too, now get lost.”
      Last nail in the coffin would be for them to announce a server split where EU/US will be like PSU.
      If they do that, they may as well not bring the game over at all.
      And again I will repeat, the gambling gatcha, will not work in the western crowd, I hope they rethink that."
    1. RadXXL's Avatar
      RadXXL -
      Wooo. After the sega lay offs, i was losing hope. SO happy to hear
    1. NitroPenguinz's Avatar
      NitroPenguinz -
      the reason they get so far behind, is that microsoft has to authorize the patches and content they put in the game, but with pc, they dont have to anymore =]
    1. NitroPenguinz's Avatar
      NitroPenguinz -
      well, for me this is really exciting. Ive been playing pso2 jp which is still quite fun. Although, none of my friends are willing to play it because they dont want to get around the bother of understanding all the japanese. But with this release, and it being f2p, me and all my friends can play and it will be freakin awesome.
    1. NitroPenguinz's Avatar
      NitroPenguinz -
      think about it, they still have to translate every bit of text and get voice actors and record English voice for the entire game so far, which is a lot. Then they need to get a ton of bugs killed, and polish it up for release. Hopefully they learned from psu, and will try to deliver updates more soon. To do this they will need a lot more communication with sega of japan to get the content and translate it as son as possible. Which is one major cause why updates came so slow for psu, cause it takes time to translate all the content added and then implement that into the game. Although it shouldn't have takings as long as it did in psu. Hopefully things will change.
    1. slave2pso's Avatar
      slave2pso -
      I think it was innevitable that it would get localised and come to US/EU - it was a question of when. But, 2013 is a long wait, so it's kinda hard to get too excited; a 2012 Q4 release would have been perfect.
    1. Kevin PSO's Avatar
      Kevin PSO -
      Oh, I'm excited alright.
    1. AOI_Tifa_Lockhart's Avatar
      AOI_Tifa_Lockhart -
      I'm glad, I got PSO2, downloaded it and couldn't even muster the enthusiasm to go past the character creator. It was rather surreal seeing as I loved PSO and spent 1k+ hours on PSU but JP PSU wasn't enjoyable enough for me. So I won't play PSO2 on JP servers, i'll just wait for the EU release. I just hope Sega of America do a better job with updates this time round.
    1. slipknotver's Avatar
      slipknotver -
      am i the only one having login problems? i only be able to log in a few times. most of the time its an error message. is the jp servers that messed up? i keep trying to at different times but i can get in niow and i know the download is fine cause i did get in a few times with a lil trouble.
    1. Ken_Silver's Avatar
      Ken_Silver -
      WHOHOOOO!!! I'm so glad. And it's f2p? That guarantees that people will always be playing. Look at dcuo, a pretty average game all in all that benefited greatly from going F2P. I will be playing and paying good money for PSO2. I promise you that Sega! So come on and take my money!
      And i'll ignore the previous history of PS games internationally because of all of the new people that will come to PSO2 and will never touch the JP servers for the same reason I won't: I can't read Japanese. I hope the servers aren't that far behind (honest concern) and global servers are a middle of the road issue for me (good if we do, not a killer if we don't). I hope that a majority of people support the localization of these games and not stick over on the JP servers. After all, there are situations where they block us over on those servers. We don't have to worry about those restrictions when they're localized.
    1. Lumpen Thingy's Avatar
      Lumpen Thingy -
      patch the game and you shouldn't have that problem
    1. slipknotver's Avatar
      slipknotver -
      how do i patch it?
    1. slipknotver's Avatar
      slipknotver -
      i thought it would patch it itself how do i do it?
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