Well, That Was Unexpected

Given the current state of affairs in Japan, you'd think that Sega might have decided to put updates for Phantasy Star Universe on hold for a little while. For a week, that was the case, but now it looks like Sega of Japan is ready to move on.

Information about this week's content update has been posted on Sega's Japanese Xbox 360 PSU Web site. The regional servers will see the arrival of the missions that made up the 3rd Anniversary Thanks Festa on the Japanese PC/PS2 servers. The event will run until Friday, May 13, for a total of seven weeks. A lobby change is also slated for this week's maintenance.

I'm sure this is a welcome surprise to many players (especially those who have been clamoring for this event for awhile). Meanwhile, the update cycle resumes on the Japanese PC/PS2 servers this week as well; Sega of Japan has also announced that it will be reducing the number of universes on those servers during this maintenance to help with the power situation there. Players on those servers were also reminded that service failures may still be possible due to rolling blackouts.

Personally, I didn't think updates would start up again so quickly. I guess it's a business decision more than anything else and the desire to get things back to normal, which is commendable. In any case, it looks like the update suspension is over.

Content Updates Postponed Indefinitely

PSU GM Edward has announced that there will be no server maintenance this week, and that scheduled content updates will resume "as soon as we are able".

The reason for this announcement should be obvious to everyone. Sega of Japan plans the updates, and due to the recent earthquake, tsunami, and escalating nuclear disaster there, there are obviously more important things to worry about. Updates on the Japanese PC/PS2 servers have been also been suspended as a result of this tragedy, and Sega of Japan has advised players to be wary of potential service failures due to rolling blackouts or other issues.

Anyone who thinks they have the right to complain about this is out of their mind. The only thing that matters right now is for the Japanese people to get back on their feet, clean up, and rebuild from these disasters. Your precious content update can wait.

PSU Demo Shutting Down

Sega today announced that the Phantasy Star Universe demo servers for Xbox 360 would be shutting down on Monday. In this post on the official PSU forums, GM Edward stated that maintaining the demo servers is no longer feasible, a statement that I'm sure most of us agree with.

Somewhere, in a remote corner of the Internet, the porn-spammers and phishers are complaining about this, but I don't think anybody else will mind. For many months now the demo servers have been a waste of processing power, occasionally bringing players to the full version of PSU but not doing much else.

This is probably a good reason why the full Xbox 360 PSU servers should never be free, although I do often wonder if the Japanese PC/PS2 "free course" draws a crowd similar to the demo server here...