Article: PSO and PSU: A History of Trial and Error

[WHlTEKNIGHT]

There is not really that many japanese players on the 360 though but this is a bit of a eye opener though considering the 360 server has the most players that they would risk it all with the mag2, no update for ages fiasco.

[DAMASCUS]

Since it is based on growth and population stability the 360 graph makes a lot of sense since its easy for someone to get into the demo and decide to download within a week. So even as people may be getting burnt out there are literally new players every day; noob influx.
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The growth potential for the PS2/PC is just not there. New players only know about the game by word of mouth and then have to be willing to take a chance on it.


That being said I believe( in my gut not my brain ) that the core PSO veteran populace of PSU is slightly higher on the PC/PS2 side but the new player crown definitely goes to 360.


Which is good since that makes PSU viable in the US when you take that into consideration and that even as low as the PC/PS2 side is its still about the same as PSO was at two years. I feel better about us getting the last(?) expansion in the US and that if a future version comes out that the Phantasy Star Online(not the game) base is healthy enough that it would do very well especially if it were released for 360 [b]AND PS3.

[Dhylec]

Interesting. I think ST is learning over the years & hopefully they'll correct what's wrong soon.

[Mewnie]

Well, I can't comment on the PS2 side, but for PC, there are many, many more options for online games, and sadly, they are much more popular (and in a few cases, better) than PSU. Blame SEGA for not advertising the game; at all.

[Tomeeboy]

I think it's interesting to see how they've managed to keep the number of subscribers somewhat level in spots with PSU, whereas PSO was a constant decline. I'm sure this can be largely attributed to the frequency of updates PSU and AOTI have received. Although PSU could have probably been a much bigger success, I think they have gone in the right direction when it comes to supporting their games with content. With the upcoming releases of PSP and PS0, it looks like Sega and Sonic Team are going to continue building and improving on the franchise.

[Brainwrecked]

Perspective-corrected and over-saturated for an easier viewing. I think.

• I find it absolutely interesting (and a bit lolz-worthy) that the XBox 360 population handily beat out JP PS2/PC population after month #5.
  
• JP PS2/PC did start catching up to the XBox 360 population during months 12 - 16, and remains steady after month #20 while XBox 360 is on an ever-so-slow decline since month 16.
  
• The only thing I see that is "tumultuous" is the JP PS2/PC population. XBox 360 has been relatively even since month #4 and US/EN PS2/PC has been in steady decline since day 1.
  

[Finalzone]

Hopefully. PSU has potential. Just Sonic Team and especially SEGA have themselves to blame for not further expanding Phantasy Star franchise oversea.
I think they need to expand on other platforms like Mac and why not Unix like like Linux operating system. They also need to modernise themselves in PC world and use png as default format instead of bmp.

[Ogni-XR21]

The sad thing is that they seem to think these "regular updates" are fooling people into thinking that new stuff is coming while everybody knows that it's just content that already there and locked by ST.
I think one major factor here is that cheating/hacking is the main reason for decline of players (besides the players leaving cause there is nothing to do) since the 360 server seems to keep most of it's players. Let's just hope they learn their lesson and make the next game more secure.
@Akira: What else but player numbers should be displayed in those graphs?

[HyperShot-X-]

I do see that the graph doesn't really specify the actual number of players on all servers and it mainly shows the fluctuation of population over 2 yr period, so it doesn't prove the actual size of population on each servers in comparison.
But I know for sure Xbox 360 population reached upto 36 full stars during peak events like 1st M.A.G. and the graph shows it's been steady all year along which means that not all subscribers on X360 are online at all times 24/7. So, you cannot base on weekly average star counts on universes to prove the actual number of subscribers on any server. You should also take into account JP PS2/PC was planning to merge 2 universes into 1 due to steady decrease in population over time. So, who's to say that this graph is not based on the actual size of subscriber base unless one can disprove it?
Maybe one possible way to tell for sure is to check the latest player ID# on each server...

[bns1991]

I'm not really surprised with how the graphs decrease over time. The 360 server stays pretty consistent, however.
PSO has probably lost a lot of players to games like World of Warcraft, but i don't see why because that game is not that good based on what people say to me.