• General

    by Published on Jun 18, 2009 10:55 PM
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    Recently, there have been a few changes in the lead positions of Sega's worldwide operations. As detailed by the official press release:
    • Simon Jeffery is no longer the President and COO of Sega of America. *He will be leaving the company for a management position at*ngmocos.
    • Mike Hayes is President and COO of Sega Europe. *He will be assuming the role of President and COO of Sega of America as well.
    • Mr. Naoya Tsurumi is the CEO of Sega of America and Sega Europe. *He will now also be overseeing operations in Japan.
    These changes are being touted as a move to not only further unite the new 'Sega West', but also to further tie leadership between Sega's eastern and western divisions.
    31 Comments
    by Published on Jun 9, 2009 09:13 PM
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    Xbox Live will be unavailable due to a maintenance period planned for Tuesday, June 16th. It is scheduled to start at 12:01 AM PST (3:01 AM EST, 7:01 AM UTC) and last for up to 24 hours.

    This downtime is said to be in preparation for recently announced feature additions to the service, however none will be available directly after the maintenance period.

    9 Comments
    by Published on Apr 2, 2009 08:00 PM
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    Major Nelson (also known as Larry Hryb) is reporting details of a mandatory system update that has just recently starting going out to all Xbox 360 owners. While it does not contain any new features, this update is supposed to help alleviate problems with interruption while playing a few (unnamed) games.

    *

    A small percentage of PSU players have reported this being troublesome at times. Does anyone out there feel this update has cut down on their own interrupt requests?

    8 Comments
    by Published on Jan 21, 2009 06:34 PM
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    In early November, Sega announced a 40 game compilation pack called Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection that will include all four original Phantasy Star games and improved graphics. After the announcement was made, some users were left wondering whether the compilation would use the Japanese "Generations" updates or the original versions. It was revealed through screenshots released last week that the original versions will be used. The new screenshots also give a good idea of what to expect from the graphical improvements. Here is one thumbnail example:


    Phantasy Star II Thumbnail

    You can view the rest of the pictures in our screenshot gallery!

    4 Comments
    by Published on Nov 8, 2008 12:03 PM
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    Sega has announced a new 40-game compilation of Genesis titles entitled the Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. Slated to be released on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, the expansion pack is tentatively planned to cost $30. It will include Phantasy Star II, III, and IV, along with dozens of other games. Also, this compilation will feature unlockable content, achievements, and updated graphics suitable for a 720p display.

    EDIT: According to the Sega game page, Phantasy Star I will be included too.
    16 Comments
    by Published on Sep 23, 2008 12:37 PM
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    Major Nelson reported earlier today that on Monday, September 29, the Xbox Live service will be going down temporarily in preparation for updates coming later this fall. The planned downtime will begin at 12:01a.m. Pacific and is expected to last for up to 24 hours. During the downtime, the Xbox Live service and "My Xbox" section of Xbox.com will be unavailable.

    5 Comments
    by Published on Sep 16, 2008 09:49 AM
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    A word of warning: There is a good chance that this may end up not being a Phantasy Star title.* However, some interesting clues that I will mention have led me to believe this could be of interest.

     

    A teaser page has been posted by Sega of Japan.* It features*what appear to be flowers*with orchestrated music.* After some credits (listed below), it allows you to click the center flower.* The screen darkens, the music changes into something more 'oldschool',*and eventually a silhouette of a dragon appears.* Then there is*the message "We're making RPG now!".* After clicking this, it shows a final line of text telling the user to check out Weekly Famitsu on September 26th.

    *

    I've*been able to spot this page on*SoJ's Homepage*as well as the JP PS2/PC PSU Homepage.

     

    Director: Kazuya Niinou (Director and Planner on Etrian Odyssey and Trauma Center: Under the Knife)

    Producer: Kodama Rieko (Various credits on Phantasy Star I, II, III, and IV as well as Producer for Skies of Arcadia)

    Sound composer: Yuzo Koshiro (Music credits*on Ys series, Beyond Oasis, Shenmue, and Etrian Odyssey)

    Character design: Mota

    *

    You can find many more notable credits for these developers by searching around. I just felt like giving some of their more interesting RPG highlights primarily.

    23 Comments
    by Published on Sep 12, 2008 08:02 PM
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    A very interesting and informative article was published at Famitsu.com Wednesday concerning the history of Phantasy Star Online and Phantasy Star Universe as well as the tumultuous nature of online games from a business standpoint. Click "Read more" below to keep reading!

     

    Takao Miyoshi spoke at Japan's CEDEC 2008 this Tuesday, bringing to light some interesting facts about the development and management of online games, in particular Phantasy Star Online and Phantasy Star Universe, with his lecture entitled "Network Game Development and Foreign Expansion."

     

    Miyoshi began with a quick history of the birth of PSO. SonicTeam focused on three points when it came to the conception of the game.

    1. The game should allow players all over the world to interact.
    2. It should focus on cooperative play and communication.
    3. It should play a part in the spread of online game popularity in Japan.

    Years of planning and research went into PSO to help achieve all of these goals, and inspiration was pulled from numerous sources. For example, Diablo inspired the speech bubble system. Miyoshi notes that while Diablo's chat log was nice, it could be difficult to immediately identify who said what. As a result, the idea of using comic book-like speech bubbles was implemented. As PSO's communications system continued to be developed, symbol chat and word select were created to help remove the language barrier that any normal communications system would face. Panzer Dragoon is another title which played a part in early development. It supplied PSO with a base for the visual morphing system used in creating a your character.

     

    While Phantasy Star Online was a major success, it still fell victim to many flaws which could not be corrected due to the Dreamcast's lack of a hard drive. One of the largest problems with the game was hacking; more specifically item duping, stat modding and character data corrupting.

     

    Miyoshi then showed a graph which displayed PSO's Japanese user population over the game's first two years. Shortly after its release, there was a sharp decline (attributed to widespread hacking and cheating), though with the release of PSO ver.2, the population made a large jump. This rise did not last, however, as the user base took an almost immediate nosedive the following month and continued to decline at a steady rate for the next year and a half. With all of this in mind, the game staff realized the importance of having countermeasures for hacking as well as giving regular content updates.

     

     

    Moving ahead, many of the advances made with the introduction of Blue Burst carried over to PSU. These included server-side saving and game patching to help combat hacking and cheating. Furthermore, the game was planned to have regular content updates on top of developing a continuing story from offline. Lobbies which would support massive numbers of players were also introduced to the game. Nevertheless, the PSU ran into numerous problems of its own. At launch, the servers were unable to handle the massive influx of players, changes to the billing system caused strife and in general, complaints about the game lit up internet blogs. This of course got the attention of SonicTeam, further reminding the staff of the importance of their involvement and care for the game.

     

    The article ends with a chart some may find surprising. This graph displays the change in population for Phantasy Star Universe over the past two years. Note the massive increase in players on the Japanese PC/PS2 servers (dark blue line) in the first month of service followed by a sharp decline over the next five. Though the player base did grow again over the following nine months, it began to fall once more and has leveled out over the past five months. The Xbox 360 servers (green line) have held relatively steady over the past two years, though the local PC/PS2 servers (purple line) have not fared nearly as well, facing a steady decline, gaining only a small boost around the time when Ambition of the Illuminus was released last fall.

     

    24 Comments
    by Published on Nov 9, 2007 03:52 PM
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    Volta writes in to tell us about a 20th Anniversary Contest taking place for the Japanese player-base. Here's the scoop:

    "On December 20, 1987 the original Phantasy Star game was released for the Sega Master System. This game was heralded as a revolution in role-playing games due to its non-conventional futuristic theme and pseudo-3D graphics. Since then, over ten games have been released chronicling the the adventures of the forces of good against the Profound Darkness.

    To celebrate the occasion, Sega Japan has announced that it will be holding an image contest across both the Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst and Phantasy Star Universe servers. Winners will get their submitted image plastered across billboards located within the game as well as some other prizes.

    To get more information and enter the contest, visit the Japanese Phantasy Star website."

    Thanks for the heads-up Volta! It's hard to believe that the Phantasy Star franchise will be turning 20 this December. Who feels old now?
    by Published on Mar 27, 2007 09:25 AM
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    The Xbox Live service is down for scheduled maintenance today, which started about 12:00AM PST (3:00AM EST) this morning. The downtime effects all Live-enabled games, including Phantasy Star Universe, as well as the Xbox and Xbox Live web sites. Maintenance is scheduled to take about 14 hours total, which should bring the servers back up some time around 2:00PM PST (5:00PM EST). While you're waiting for the servers to come back up, it might be a good time to try out PSU's story mode, or visit the Phantasy Star Universe forums!

    5 Comments
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