Sega of America, Europe Employees Laid Off

This is a rather unfortunate bit of news, especially considering the current state of the economy. Seventy-three employees of Sega -- 36 in San Francisco and 37 in London -- were handed pink slips yesterday as part of an effort to "implement a reorganization of its businesses within the American and [European] markets".

In this thread on the official PSU forums, GM Edward quickly confirmed the news and announced that nobody on Sega of America's PSU team was laid off. For now, that's good news for the regional servers, though in my opinion this "reorganization" doesn't exactly paint a picture of a corporation in good financial straits.

Whether or not the PC/PS2 servers were a casualty of the restructuring effort will probably never be known. Nobody knows exactly how much Sega was spending on maintenance of those servers, and Sega will probably never tell. Hopefully the Xbox 360 player population doesn't begin free-falling, because in an economic environment where struggling companies will cut costs any way they can, those servers would probably be first on the chopping block.

The complete story, including a full copy of the e-mail sent to Sega employees, can be read over at Kotaku. Hopefully everyone affected by this layoff will be able to rebound and find work elsewhere.

Supplemental Update Announced

Maybe Sega of America has realized that recent content updates aren't doing much to hold the attention of the US/EU PSU audience.

Today, GM Edward took the highly unusual step of announcing a major content update months before it is due on the servers, both on the website and official forums. The PSU "supplemental update", which was announced in Japan last January and released there last March, is finally making its way to the regional game.

In order to prepare for the supplemental update, Sega also announced that players without the Ambition of the Illuminus expansion pack will no longer be able to play the game online after Monday, June 21. Although no official release date was provided for the update, odds are that it will be available 2-3 weeks after the "vanilla" PSU players are cut off.

Honestly, I'm surprised that the supplemental update is making it to the US/EU game. It will be interesting to see how certain aspects of the update are implemented here, especially the special "Guardians Cash" content for which players must shell out real money.

I'm also a little angry that this announcement comes so closely on the heels of the PC/PS2 shutdown. It would have been nice to actually play and enjoy this content, but as we all know, Sega had other ideas.

Anyway, that's it for now. We'll definitely be posting more on this as the content release date approaches.

Why would anyone want PSU on Xbox 360's Games on Demand?

You guys have seen the type of treatment this game gets right? So why would you monsters want others to suffer the same fate as you?

Not to mention if it were put online it would be overpriced like most of the other crap on Xbox Live probably with an absurd price of 30 or 20 dollars. And we all know PSUv1 isn't worth anything close to that; at most the game should be $5 alone or $10 bundled with AOTI (and while they're at it they can lower the AOTI's price to $5). It's the only way I can see the game sell and have people try network mode. But truthfully I really doubt putting the game up on Live will help the game's community grow since if it were put on Live it would most likely be overpriced so at best you'd probably have achievement whores download it for the easy 1000 points in offline mode.

Seeing how fighting to get PSU on Games on Demand is a lost cause I think you guys should change your focus to getting Deadly Premonition on instead. Sure it was only released a few months ago but it is a much better value than PSU in its current state. Seriously.

Today's Pointless Thread of the Day

When I read the official forums, I occasionally find a thread that just begs to be posted here.

Today, I offer up this thread for your personal enjoyment as Pointless Thread of the Day. Normally when I decide to post these, I tend to read through the entire thread first -- but this one grabbed my attention from the very first post. I realize that this one post does not summarize the level of intelligence (or lack thereof) of the Xbox 360 community, but still, this was pretty ridiculous.

As if this wasn't bad enough, some of the players that replied thought it would be cool to leave their World of Warcraft macros in the thread for all to read. I swear, for all the bitching Xbox 360 players do about seeing non-Xbox 360 PSU threads in General Discussion, they sure do post a lot of non-Xbox 360 PSU shit in General Discussion.

It's an Update Week! (Updated)

Yes, the regional PSU servers are getting an update this week, but it's not much.

In fact, it's about the same as the previous update in terms of actual new content: one party mission and seasonal lobbies.

The content update, announced on the game's Web page and in the official forums, consists of "A Risky Comeback", a new Neudaiz mission for 2-4 players, and the spring lobbies. MAG+ medal rewards are also being distributed to Xbox 360 players who ranked on the time attack leaderboards during the event last month.

Screenshots of the new mission are once again notably absent from the update information page. However, screenshots of content that was previously available on PC/PS2 (the medals and lobbies) have been posted, so I guess it's still safe to assume that Sega hasn't invested in any capture cards for their precious Xbox 360 consoles. Oh well.

Xbox 360 players seem to be taking this latest update surprisingly well, but apparently that's because most think the supplemental update is coming shortly after. Maybe it will actually arrive soon, but given Sega's track record with the US/EU game, I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

Don't expect it for at least another two three weeks, anyway.

UPDATE: The Japanese update page indicates that the seasonal lobbies will last for the next three weeks. Enjoy your new mission, everyone!

No Maintenance This Week

GM Edward posted early this morning that there will be no maintenance this week for the US/EU PSU servers.

For some reason, this seemed to shock a few players in this thread on the official forums. I'm not sure why, but it did.

The best shot at new content for awhile appears to be next week, when the Easter lobbies are scheduled to come down. After that, who knows what will happen...

Maybe Our Billing Wasn't So Bad

For all the complaints about Sega's billing system for PC/PS2, including the infamous Error 65, consider that things could have been a lot worse.

Electronic Arts reports that its billing system for the MMORPG Warhammer Online erroneously charged some players for their monthly payment an average of 22 additional times. At $14.99/month, that means that players would have been charged an additional $329.78 (or possibly more) for a single month of gameplay!

Sega's billing system may have been bad, but the worst thing it did was block access to the servers for a few weeks. Most players that were hit with the error even got some free play time out of it!

Warhammer Online players weren't so lucky. I imagine that there are a lot of people that got hit with overdraft charges as a result of this screw-up. EA says that they are going to correct the mistake, but what will they do about the people that are being penalized by their banks for overdrawing their accounts?

Read the full story over at Kotaku. And remember that we didn't have it so bad!

No Maintenance This Week

GM Edward posted this afternoon that there will be no maintenance this week for the US/EU PSU servers.

For some reason, this seemed to shock a few players in this thread on the official forums. I'm not sure why, but it did.

I expect to see everyone right back here next week so I can make this exact same post again. Until then...

More Post-Shutdown Musings

I'm not sure why I didn't notice this before... but it was pointed out on the official forums that the information page for this week's content update was missing screenshots of the new party mission.

Evidently, Sega uses the PC/PS2 test servers to get screenshots of all new content, according to GM Edward:

...[We] have always pulled screenshots for updates from the PC/PS2 update servers and are in the process of switching over.

Normally, there would be screenshots posted on the page, but one minor detail prevented that from happening this time around.

So instead, Edward offered this solution:

In fact, if any Xbox 360 users have capture cards and want to post mission pictures of themselves in the New Challengers mission, I will add them to the site. Sound good?

Oops. Sounds like Sega doesn't have a way to take screenshots of new content on their Xbox 360s. If only PSU was available on a platform where users could easily take pictures and upload them... but alas, it is not.

What a shame.

And it's dead

Well last night was the end of PSU. I wasn't really planning to get on last night but ended up seeing the game off with the GM's and other players that showed up.

My last day of PSU started off with everyone's favorite mission; yes that's right White Beast. I did two runs with some friends from PSO and a few randoms. I only did it cause Edward was in that area. I swear!

Oh my level 40 Boma Diga! Not like it matters now!

After the second run we were trolled by the game and received a chance to run one of the rare missions, unfortunately I forgot to take a screen shot of this horrible moment.

It's the first and last time I'll play this mission.

Luckily nothing good dropped or I'd probably would have rage quit right there. Anyway, there was some more lobby hopping after the mission and the final stop was the Falz Memoria lobby.

Oh hey 3 stars! I can't remember the last time I saw that many.

Crowding around GMs is fun.

Along with Edward, Clumsyorchid (aka Human M) and RubyEclipse (aka Melchior) came to say goodbye to everyone. The end came with horrible spam then all was quiet with just an error 057 message box.

The PC/PS2 servers got PSU's bad ending.

Well that was the somewhat short version of the last day of PSU. It was great to see and play with friends one last time and it was nice to see some activity on the server itself. It was fun while it lasted and I'd like to thank everyone I played with for the good times I had on PSU.

As for the blog: things might be slow for awhile but I'm sure I'll find a few things to talk about. Like that faster update promise for the Xbox 360 servers or if Phantasy Star Portable 2 makes it way west I could complain about its lame DLC; that is if we even get the option for it. Well only time will tell, so long for now.

Well, That's It

At approximately 3 AM EDT this morning, the PC/PS2 PSU servers were shut down.

A thread immortalizing the moments leading up to the server shutdown has been started on the official forums. Several screenshots of the final seconds have been posted there -- maybe you were in one! (I wasn't, because I can't function on 3 hours of sleep during the week. Maybe next time.)

Oddly enough, as many people noted on the forums, the PC/PS2 server population skyrocketed in the hours leading up to the shutdown. By the end of the whole thing Universe 1 showed 3 full stars! The question on my mind, and maybe many others, is this: Where have these people been? I can't remember the last time the PC/PS2 servers had 3 full stars of players. If just some of these players had stuck around for the long haul, would this server shutdown have happened?

On the other hand, I see last night's sudden increase in population as a damning criticism of Sega's management of this game. Obviously there are a lot of players out there who decided that it wasn't worth $10/month to be treated like second-class citizens by Sega of Japan. I do tend to agree with that, and in a way, I think Sega probably got what it deserved.

Worse, the poor management of this game may have turned a lot of players off to future Phantasy Star online titles. Hopefully Sega learned some lessons from the last 3 1/2 years of PC/PS2 PSU and will use them to create a better experience for players of the next game.

Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 PSU servers remain up on this Thursday afternoon, with the servers scheduled to go down for maintenance at 2 AM EDT Friday morning. As previously posted, a new mission and Easter lobbies will be added in this maintenance.

Despite the fact that the PC/PS2 servers may be gone, there's still plenty to talk about. There may be a glimmer of hope left for those players who weren't ready to abandon PSU just yet. On the Xbox 360 side, there will still be update news to post and discuss, and I have a feeling that in a few short months we'll see whether or not Sega's handling of the game will bring about the demise of those servers.

One final note before I close out this post: I did manage to get online for a few hours last night, and it was awesome to see (and run missions with) some old familiar friends and faces. It was fun while it lasted. Hopefully we'll all see each other again on the next Phantasy Star game -- whenever that happens!