AH PS-P2 dead but who's to blame?

[johnwolf]

both i believe because of one fact, abandonment. that's right, the game was abandoned by both the community AND Sega of NA. why though, why did the community stop playing. infact people started to drop off the second Infinity got released. but this makes NO sence what so ever. infact it might have DOOMED an localization of Infinity. i'm not saying ALL of the community is to blamed but it seems to me that it's still our fualt. if we played this game and kept playing i bet that infinity would have atleast been givin an american ToA. but no, one year and almost no one is on (sept some hackers and MABY a few legits). now everyone knows and hates about how Sega of NA handled PS-P2 but everyone griped over the little stuff. sure hackers are bad but as long as a community is strong, hackers can do little and eventualy the community would be heard. next the little wing licence, why this a problem? Sure if it worked it would limit hacks but REALY, why even CARE. Online passes are BAD. i want to borrow a game from my uncle I CAN'T PLAY ONLINE. it's pointless and STUPID and limits the consumer. now these could have been handled better but here is the BIG one. there is no PS-P2 Demo, Full game Download, OR the theme. all are gone, only thing PS-P related is the PS-P demo. THIS is abandoning a game, no developer sapport, no community support. this game will fall in OBSCURITY because of this lack of support from both the community and Sega of NA here in the us.

[Heskett]

Wow, you're really blowing some serious steam over things that belong in the past. Phantasy Star is a niche series in NA, the PSP wasn't that popular in NA, PSPo2 was released in NA after Infinity was announced for JP, so a lot of people didn't buy Portable 2 since they knew a better game was coming out.

This thread belongs in September 2010, not March 2012.

[blace]

As I said over in the other thread, is this your first online PSP game? They have all been the same in the regard that the online community is diminishing.

Also this game is one of the more successful games on the system, albeit most of the players on now pirated the game. Comparing this to other games the community is more active than other PSP titles. In terms of longevity, handhelds just don't last that long. The fact that the game still has a somewhat active community, is something.

[Mike]

why though, why did the community stop playing. infact people started to drop off the second Infinity got released. but this makes NO sence what so ever.
Heskett said it. Infinity was announced shortly before the release of localized versions of PSP2. Some people swore off buying PSP2 to wait for Infinity but that doesn't seem to have worked too well.


infact it might have DOOMED an localization of Infinity.
Piracy and the PSP being at the end of it's life-cycle in the US doomed Infinity. It doomed another popular Sega PSP game as well. Sega is a company and if doing something isn't going to make them money, you won't see them do it.


i'm not saying ALL of the community is to blamed but it seems to me that it's still our fualt. if we played this game and kept playing i bet that infinity would have atleast been givin an american ToA.
It's not the community's fault. This is how communities work in all games. Blace says it pretty well in this topic.


now everyone knows and hates about how Sega of NA handled PS-P2 but everyone griped over the little stuff. sure hackers are bad but as long as a community is strong, hackers can do little and eventualy the community would be heard.
Honestly, both forms of download content the localized versions of PSP2 didn't see were big deals. In the course of it's lifetime, the Japanese version of PSP2 got a ton of DLC, new missions, new C-mode stages, and even two online events. The English version got bubkis. Sure the Japanese missions worked with the English version but they weren't official.

The paid DLC helped pay for server maintence and upkeep in the Japanese version this includes the events and missions and stuff but it also includes a partial ability to keep the servers free of cheaters. I can't say if the lacking of this actually factored in to the lack of ability of GMs to keep cheaters from playing but the real problem stems from your next point.


next the little wing licence, why this a problem? Sure if it worked it would limit hacks but REALY, why even CARE.
Yes, it would limit cheaters if it worked. It didn't though so even if GMs or someone similar was able to ban cheaters in the localized versions, they could slip back in with the same copy of the game. With a license bound to a PSN account and a working system, a ban can force the cheater to need to buy another game to play online and using more money to get a game can cause people to think twice about if they want to cheat or not.


why even CARE.
Because cheating online ruins the game.


there is no PS-P2 Demo, Full game Download, OR the theme. all are gone, only thing PS-P related is the PS-P demo.
Ask SoA. They're the only ones who know why.


this game will fall in OBSCURITY because of this lack of support from both the community and Sega of NA here in the us.
Blame Sega all you want but this is the way gaming communities work. You come in to the game late and it's going to be empty.

[Atbar]

No matter how well PSP2 has done outside of Japan, I'm sure the playerbase nowadays would be as small as it is now. It has been mentioned already in this thread that online communities in handheld games don't last and being late to the party being having either only a few to party with or having none to party with at all. I noticed you have a PSZ F/C in your signature, Johnwolf. That game is much older than PSP2 and I have seen how quickly the online community for that game has died off within a year of that game being released outside of Japan. It's sad to see new players coming to PSO-World every week to play PSZ and don't realize how is a lot more difficult nowadays to get people together to play it whenever.

[Akaimizu]

I still can't help but feel that PSP2 would've had a nice resurgence if they made it work on the Vita. I was trying to get that point across, but it kind of feel on deaf ears. I knew the Vita launch would bring a lot of folks looking for a good online hack & slash. Now instead of them picking PSP2 as the obvious choice for the best one on the system, they are still looking for one that would be half as good. The one and only choice they have is minimal at best and overpriced. More akin to an Untold Legends title than anything of Phantasy Star quality.

Well, hopefully the wait for a Phantasy Star title, that will play on the Vita, won't be too long or get overshadowed by some other game to fill the void before it releases. Guess the fix wasn't worth the time and effort compared to projected boosted sales for Vita system owners. I only feel half-burned because I bought the game twice. Got the digital copy as well, with the whole idea that I would play it on the Vita.

[Powder Keg]

Anyone buying an unpopular game of an already unpopular system expecting success outside of JP didn't think things through very well. Not to be a dick, but it was pretty obvious.

The system has virtually zero security, and the PS community has been known to jump ship at the first sign of any type of online cheating.

[Akaimizu]

Well, actually. It's not necessarily the *first sign* of any type of online cheating. It mainly happens (as a Phantasy Star exclusive thing, it seems) when hackers learn to do something that potentially messes-up the save file of those they jump in the party with.

Now PSP2 doesn't have anything quite as bad as NOL, but it's pretty darn close enough to get people worried about a random coming in and messing up their character.

The Western Playstation Portable was on life-support at the time PSP2 came out, so yeah, that is a good reason for relatively low sales. Alas, they really should've used the opportunity to bank on selling it mostly to the Vita crowd since there's more life in a newly announced system with impressive specs.

[Powder Keg]

Well, actually. It's not necessarily the *first sign* of any type of online cheating. It mainly happens (as a Phantasy Star exclusive thing, it seems) when hackers learn to do something that potentially messes-up the save file of those they jump in the party with.

Now PSP2 doesn't have anything quite as bad as NOL, but it's pretty darn close enough to get people worried about a random coming in and messing up their character.

The Western Playstation Portable was on life-support at the time PSP2 came out, so yeah, that is a good reason for relatively low sales. Alas, they really should've used the opportunity to bank on selling it mostly to the Vita crowd since there's more life in a newly announced system with impressive specs.

I remember the first big drop in PSU PC's population was when meseta started getting duped. Upon release it saw about the same population as 360's, but it never seemed to grow more than one universe after that initial fiasco.

[Akaimizu]

The PC was a bit different. There was a bigger reason for it. One that I actually talked about on this very forum when the game was just about to come out. It was also a very unpopular mention, from what I remember. People were too busy being fanboys of their favorite system and bashing other systems to think about the business aspect of online gaming, which is what I was making as a talking point.

The thing I mentioned is that the PC world is different. There's fierce competition for online gaming on the PC and that was the real reason. PSU being abandoned on the PC was akin to dozens of titles who got abandoned on the PC due to lack of updates. You don't keep up with the joneses, and your product dies. I predicted that because Sonic Team's previous efforts wouldn't hold in today's PC market, not simply because it was a Phantasy Star Audience. It's why almost every Sci-fi-based online RPG or MMO, save for EVE, had a quick and early death on PC. I remember the promising Tabula Rasa. One of the biggest ones to die off quickly. Playstation 2, having so many players not with online capable systems, wasn't going to help out much. It was why I said the 360 version was likely to last longer.

PC users start to jump ship the moment they start feeling like the company isn't really supporting the release and that they are paying too much for little support. Even by the time you described, the PC players, over here, were still dealing with *trickle content* and players quickly reaching a game where it didn't let them progress further. That's a super turn off for the players with access to Guild Wars (with no monthly fees) and a hundred other games with fast developers constantly dropping new stuff every other week. Plus big content packs that release and/or have major advertisements for the *next big thing*. Heck, even look at one of their pages. If they aren't always advertising some Uber new experience on their front page, all the time, they're doing something wrong.

As for PC sci-fi MMOs. Seems only Star Trek online is holding its own. Struggling, but holding, thanks to its move to a F2P model. It's recovering like AD&D did before it. And yes, that is always advertising that the next awesome addition is around the corner, sometimes even giving players a email reminder when the release is out just in case they missed it on their front page or were away for some time.

But on the consoles, where the competition is paper thin, that's a different story. The expectations are far lower.

[Keilyn]

Wow, you're really blowing some serious steam over things that belong in the past. Phantasy Star is a niche series in NA, the PSP wasn't that popular in NA, PSPo2 was released in NA after Infinity was announced for JP, so a lot of people didn't buy Portable 2 since they knew a better game was coming out.

This thread belongs in September 2010, not March 2012.

No its not.

The fan base is tiny. Few people know about it. I was in four gaming clubs with me and a friend being the only involved who knew anything about Phantasy Star. The lack of Support to the games, the fact the Xbox version of PSU is the first Phantasy Star game to survive on its platform for over three years.

It just goes to show how great SEGA is at hyping a product up in the US just to take everyone's money and once the hype ends, bye bye population, in comes a dead product.

I mean the US versions have the shortest lifespan while the japanese versions survive for 5 - 10 years...What gives?

[Anon_Fire]

No its not.

The fan base is tiny. Few people know about it. I was in four gaming clubs with me and a friend being the only involved who knew anything about Phantasy Star. The lack of Support to the games, the fact the Xbox version of PSU is the first Phantasy Star game to survive on its platform for over three years.

It just goes to show how great SEGA is at hyping a product up in the US just to take everyone's money and once the hype ends, bye bye population, in comes a dead product.

I mean the US versions have the shortest lifespan while the japanese versions survive for 5 - 10 years...What gives?

What SEGA needs to do is give Phantasy Star real marketing and promotion. No wonder they're in financial trouble.

[Akaimizu]

That's been a real problem for much of SEGA's titles, not just Phantasy Star. When they decided to go software and ditch costs, one of the main things they needed to do was to allocate more money to the global marketting strategy. The other thing is to take heed on franchises that got a lot of fan love. That's something Nintendo does well. While some may talk about them milking franchises, they certainly know how to keep their licenses refreshed in the minds of gamers of all generations. SEGA's biggest misstep is often in how they let a series stagnate allowing generations of gamers to not be aware of said licenses, forcing them to rebuild the brand from scratch. The idea is, if you got something hot, keep it there.

Kind of funny, because little groups like Atlus and NIS base their entire strategy on things fans want. Keeping the ball rolling on loved series, and they do pretty well for themselves. They are also quite savvy at how the allocate the money. The idea is that they're a bit more cautious with dumping huge supplies at launch needlessly (testing the demand of the market by pure limited amounts of first production) while at the same time, allocating much better resource into getting the word around for all of their products. SEGA often does the opposite. Dump a lot of product, but keep folks relatively in the dark about it. Face it, Phantasy Star Portable 2 had like zero advertising in the states. It was all word-of-mouth from people who remember to still play a PSP. When it released, nobody even saw advertisements on gamefaqs or anything. Even worse, there must've been a problem with promotional copies because many many review sites never even had a review of PSP2 up. Those that did, posted some review months and months after the game was out.

PSP2 had, by far, the exact opposite of advertising push in the states compared to Japan. The complete and total opposite.

[johnwolf]

also why do people say that if a handheld game dose good for one year and then DIES it's a GOOD GAME. it's the lack of support FOR handhelds that kills a game. and support has to come from 2 areas, the gameing comunity and the companiny. i said that befor and i'll say it again, it was abandoned and will be casted off in the NA region as a hidden gem.

[Mike]

also why do people say that if a handheld game dose good for one year and then DIES it's a GOOD GAME.
Because people switch games more quickly on handhelds, no matter what the support.

[NoiseHERO]

Doesn't it kind of seem like...

Even though this is a phantasy star fansite.

Almost everyone here doesn't nothing but attack the series... e_e

This is why I keep ending up in PSO vs PSU arguments. YOU GUYS AREN'T REAL FANS, YOU JUST LIKE A COUPLE OF GAMES! I HAVE TO DESTROY ALL OF YOU!!

[johnwolf]

Because people switch games more quickly on handhelds, no matter what the support.

realy? despite that Japan says other wise? NA handheld games lack the support compaired to japan's. they have huge fan bases and they market much more aggressively there. I hardly see any handheld games advertised in america. so i do believe support dose make a huge difference. much more then you seem to believe.

[Mike]

despite that Japan says other wise?
Japan doesn't say otherwise. PSP2, PSP2i, and PSZ both had lost a large portion of their population a year after they launched. I've said that before. You're just not listening.

[EvilMag]

Mike's right. I remember in the demo of PSP2i, I saw at peak time 14 stars. Yet recently during peak time I only see 6 stars.

Handheld games don't have that lasting appeal console games do.

[blace]

Not to mention the game and content can only hold appeal for only so long. With a game being at most 2GB on the system, you can't really improve upon its content without having to make a whole new game that carries it all over.