E3 2012?

[Alex Longstride]

As I'm sure we're all aware, June 5-7 is E3 2012. This may be purely speculation at this point, but I'm willing to guess that the "before summer" date of the Closed Beta is conveniently before E3 for a good reason: PSO2 may very well be shown at E3.

It might be wishful thinking, but I can also imagine that the Open Beta will be in Japanese and English (probably a rudimentary translation; but hey, stranger things have happened). Sega had hinted that they wanted to opt for a "Worldwide release" but were "unsure of the schedule".

E3 would make interest in the game and the Open Beta skyrocket.

I may be over-thinking this; what do y'all think?

[Randomness]

Well, it makes sense to not bother translating for alphas and possibly CB, since everything stands to change a bunch.

If they're planning to release everywhere the same day, then I would hope the open beta is worldwide too.

[ashley50]

I don't think it'll happen.

[Mag-X]

This is Sega we're talking about here. They'll probably release the game in the west without telling anyone, and then shut it down in six months because nobody plays it.

[HandOfThornz]

Marketing wise, it would make sense to release the game to the western world after showing it off at E3.
Releasing PSO2 to the western world without a major western promotion show like E3 would simply be nuts for profits, considering the amount of money spent on development time.

If there will be a western release (which i think there is will be), E3 is the time we will hear of it ;)

[Alex Longstride]

Marketing wise, it would make sense to release the game to the western world after showing it off at E3.
Releasing PSO2 to the western world without a major western promotion show like E3 would simply be nuts for profits, considering the amount of money spent on development time.

If there will be a western release (which i think there is will be), E3 is the time we will hear of it ;)

Thanks. This is what I was trying to say in my original post, and more.

[HandOfThornz]

No worries dude, not to much longer before we know if we have to start learning Japanese ;)

[Alex Longstride]

This is Sega we're talking about here. They'll probably release the game in the west without telling anyone, and then shut it down in six months because nobody plays it.

Why would they bother? Translating a game is actually quite a bit more complicated than most people realize, so why spend the time/money/labor without intending to turn a decent profit, which a silent release would probably make impossible? SEGA may be silly, but they're not losing money last time I checked...

[moorebounce]

I want the game to release already and I'm tired of waiting. Who knows with Sega. Sega's brass are Idiot Savants. They're good at making games but marketing and U.S. server up keep are another story.

[NoiseHERO]

Why would they bother? Translating a game is actually quite a bit more complicated than most people realize, so why spend the time/money/labor without intending to turn a decent profit, which a silent release would probably make impossible? SEGA may be silly, but they're not losing money last time I checked...

Actually translating a game is the part that takes the LEAST time. It usually only takes around less than a few months.

@ Mag-X I'd punch you in the mouth if I wasn't going to play the JP version, every online game I play pretty much does this. People don't deserve to make money for their product, if they're not gonna spend any money on advertising outside of a few game magazine/website articles that no one reads.

[Mag-X]

Why would they bother? Translating a game is actually quite a bit more complicated than most people realize, so why spend the time/money/labor without intending to turn a decent profit, which a silent release would probably make impossible? SEGA may be silly, but they're not losing money last time I checked...

Don't ask me why Sega are such masters at missing a good opportunity. They have it down to a science though. That's for sure.

[Randomness]

Actually translating a game is the part that takes the LEAST time. It usually only takes around less than a few months.

Exactly. I'd expect someone fluent in Japanese and English to be able to translate basically every mission description in vanilla PSU in a week without trouble.

[Omega-z]

I'm not sure What Sega will do not even Gameinformer has any clue to PSO2 or the Franchise (but others like Duelshock did odd). Infact their thinking Anarchy Reigns will be the #1 hit wonder for the 2012 year. They even talked a lot about Sega in that issue too, Who know's?:rappy:

[youcantcatchtheblue]

I think there will be a showing at E3.


...

E3 2013 that is.


If they wanted to do a "Worldwide Release" they would have announced the international version by now. I still believe there's going to be one, but the Japanese are surely getting their version first if you ask me ;(

[Enforcer MKV]

I dunno; I feel that Sega has been shaping up as of late. I'm on the fence about E3, though. On the one hand, this is one of Sega's big franchises. I can definitely foresee a bigger effort being put into it. On the other, Sega has dropped the ball before, a lot. If we don't see it at E3, I think a worldwide simultaneous release doesn't look too good. It was hinted in like...what, the first trailer, that we'd get worldwide servers? Of course, it was a hint, not outright. Speculation could have been wrong.

I'm personally holding out hope for worldwide release.

[Serephim]

Why would they bother? Translating a game is actually quite a bit more complicated than most people realize, so why spend the time/money/labor without intending to turn a decent profit, which a silent release would probably make impossible? SEGA may be silly, but they're not losing money last time I checked...


This doesn't take long at all.

For instance, Final Fantasy 6 (in its ENTIRETY) was translated by one person. Oh yeah, and it was done in 30 days.



Time is obviously cut with a full localization team. It'd probably take longer to find voice actors than it would to actually translate the material...

[FOkyasuta]

Maybe not this year. But who knows, maybe they might show it at another game convention later this year.

Sega be tricky to find out.


This doesn't take long at all.

For instance, Final Fantasy 6 (in its ENTIRETY) was translated by one person. Oh yeah, and it was done in 30 days.



Time is obviously cut with a full localization team. It'd probably take longer to find voice actors than it would to actually translate the material...

Talk about dedication to his work.

[moorebounce]

I think they did the localization as they were making the game. All the "Codes" are in english already. You also had Alpha testers using english word characters for their character names and in their chat.

[NoGoBoard]

Maybe not E3, but definitely TGS in September, whatever that means for worldwide release.

[Alex Longstride]

I think they did the localization as they were making the game. All the "Codes" are in english already. You also had Alpha testers using english word characters for their character names and in their chat.

That's an interesting point. Also a lot of the datamined filenames were in English. Maybe this will be an international version off the bat.

[kyuuketsuki]

The Codes being in English has no more to do with localization anymore than them using Ranks C, B, A, and S has to do with localization. It's quite common in Japanese games, even ones that are never released outside the Japanese market, to have splashes of English here and there.

Neither do the file names being in English have anything to do with localization.

There's not going to be tons of dialogue to translate and voice acting to record in PSO2, as far as I'm aware, so it should be a fairly quick localization job.

Unfortunately, Mag-X is right that SEGA has generally done a poor job advertising and otherwise raising awareness for a lot of their projects outside of Japan even when there is an NA/EU release, of which the Phantasy Star Online/Universe series has been a prime example. I certainly hope they'll have a presence and show the game at E3 2012, but I honestly wouldn't be at all surprised if they didn't.

[Crawfeesh]

Sega's redeemed themselves in the past few months. If they don't announce it at E3, they'll find another way to show off the game globally.

[kyuuketsuki]

Sega's redeemed themselves in the past few months
How so?

[moorebounce]

The Codes being in English has no more to do with localization anymore than them using Ranks C, B, A, and S has to do with localization. It's quite common in Japanese games, even ones that are never released outside the Japanese market, to have splashes of English here and there.

Neither do the file names being in English have anything to do with localization.

I respect your opinion but I beg to differ. I'm an American and I wouldn't put any Japanese language in my game unless it was going to somehow be released in that country.

On the other hand maybe the Japanese language doesn't have characters to describe certain actions and english was needed.

[pikachief]

How so?

Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations were great. (only played Generations but I loved that and heard colors was good. Speaking of someone who hasn't liked a sonic game since Adventure Battle 2)

Playing the alpha that seems amazing. Idk what else Sega has done lately but with Sonic and Phantasy Star they seem to be on the right track so far.

[Mag-X]

As for english words being in the game already, I think part of it is that it's just considered cool, and partly because not being in the same universe, the characters of Phantasy Star probably wouldn't actually speak the same language as a tiny island nation from an alternate universe.

For file names and such, english just gets used a lot when computers and programming are involved.

[NoiseHERO]

I respect your opinion but I beg to differ. I'm an American and I wouldn't put any Japanese language in my game unless it was going to somehow be released in that country.

On the other hand maybe the Japanese language doesn't have characters to describe certain actions and english was needed.

Actually Japanese people have been known to make a LOT of messages and signs in english.

Especially in their media and advertisements.

A game can be called "Double Dragon: Ninja Revenge in Texas." The intro screen before all of the stages would be in english. And there would be signs in the stages that's say in plain english "Juice shop!" "EAT AT JOES!" or something.

Then this game never comes to america.

I'm not sure what it is, maybe it's just how Americanized other cultures around the world have become. Japan going to extra mile to use english language and over saturated western culture in their media. But the last thing it means is "WE'RE READY TO SEND THIS TO AMERICA ASAP!"

Maybe it's like that one stupid american dude that get's chinese text/characters tatoo'd to his back. (And it really means cat poop or something.) He just thinks it looks cool. But in Japan's case, it's not that one stupid guy that likes the way english looks, but a LOT of people and they actually teach basic engr-english in their schools.



TL;DR: It's just supposed to look nice/fancy and sound cool, because Japanese people think the English language is cool.

[Kent]

How so?
Sonic Generations is pretty much one of the best games to come out in 2011. And this is considering that we got, for example, Dark Souls in the same year.

The general consensus is that the entire game is pretty great except for the final boss and even then, it's primarily because it's one of the only times where various other characters in the series are not only talking, but they also won't shut the hell up. The fight itself is a bit quirky, which is kind of a let-down from the NiGHTS-inspired boss fight at the end of Unleashed, which was just fantastic. Sonic Unleashed was amazing as well, despite having the Stretch Armstrong werehog thing that is only really complained about by people who haven't played it or have no appreciation for good action games.

I like to think that the reason PSU turned out to be such a piece of crap is because Sonic Team's manpower prioritized Unleashed, while the interns and junior members got put onto working on PSU. The critical quality differential between the two certainly implies that as being the case.

[NoiseHERO]

Sonic Generations is pretty much one of the best games to come out in 2011. And this is considering that we got, for example, Dark Souls in the same year.

The general consensus is that the entire game is pretty great except for the final boss and even then, it's primarily because it's one of the only times where various other characters in the series are not only talking, but they also won't shut the hell up. The fight itself is a bit quirky, which is kind of a let-down from the NiGHTS-inspired boss fight at the end of Unleashed, which was just fantastic. Sonic Unleashed was amazing as well, despite having the Stretch Armstrong werehog thing that is only really complained about by people who haven't played it or have no appreciation for good action games.

I like to think that the reason PSU turned out to be such a piece of crap is because Sonic Team's manpower prioritized Unleashed, while the interns and junior members got put onto working on PSU. The critical quality differential between the two certainly implies that as being the case.

Nah I bought that game, werehog is why I didn't beat it.

Some people don't want to play crash bandicoot in a sonic game.

IMO, they should've made it Sonic and Knuckles if they wanted to make it half hack n slash/scavenger hunt game. But I guess with that erm... story book generation of sonic targetted towards kids. The kind of Sonic fans targetted could probably care less about knuckles, let alone him teaming up/rivaling Sonic. Since it's Post Shadow the Hedgehog...

[Kion]

I'm more interested in when the game comes out in general. We'll have to see what Sakai says in his posts following up the second alpha. But I expect something along the lines of the team spending a month or two following up the input from the alpha, moving into a beta and then releasing the game in Japan coinciding with the Tokyo game show.

As for a global release, I've come to expect very little from Sega's ability to grasp the larger picture. This is a Japanese game, for a Japanese audience by a Japanese team, it's more that we happen to like it rather than having some entitlement to it (A lot of japanese gamers were sad pandas that Deus Ex didn't come out in Jp for PC). I've seen tons of posts in Korean about being excited about the game. So i think the best scenario would be a open source translation option. The game wouldn't take long for PSO-W to translate at all. And it's more a matter of menus because I dont think anyone really cares about localized voice acting. What would be great is if they allowed regions outside of Japan to cover their own translation. They'd get a wider audience for free and we'd get faster better access to the game. It'd definitely be worth hitting them up about that option.

As for using english text in coding and the user interface is kind of a recent movement in Japan. A lot of software is imported from English and when they translate it to Japanese, they either have to change words to katakana or find an equivalent kanji. And user's have been saying "wtf is this?" because there will be options in menus that japanese people cant read because it will be the katakana-ized version of some jargon which is impossible to look up. So recently some users have started to just get used to a prefer english interfaces for things like dreamweaver, or eclipse and stuff like that.

Also programming is pretty set to english characters. You cant have something like
var 縦; so rather than using the romaji: var tate; it's becoming more and more common practice to use the english and keep the programming consistent. ie var sheild;. Because all programming is generally done with english keywords anyways, programmers are mostly used to it and it's not a big stretch for them.